Aaron's Rotten Advice: August 27, 2010 ("Shorter Day, Shorter Entry!") Edition
DEAR AMY: My husband and I have a teenage daughter. When we go on vacation, we always allow our daughter to bring a friend. The last two years we have taken beach vacations and stayed in a condominium.
When inviting our guest, we ask nothing from them other than that they bring enough money to cover one meal a day and pay for their own towel-rental fee. We cover everything else.
These last two vacations have been exhausting for me. Both times my daughter's guest did very little, if anything, to help out. The guests left their dishes lying around, wet towels on the floor and basically acted as if I was their maid. I kept saying, "This is my vacation too," but this fell on deaf ears.
Both of these girls are from financially comfortable families. My spouse and I work multiple jobs to allow our child all the extras, vacations included. What disappoints me is that neither of these girls formally thanked us. I didn't expect a gift, but feel that a handwritten thank-you card was in order.
Am I wrong?
— MIFFED MOM
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
For expecting a thank-you note from a couple of spoiled, rich bitches? No, not wrong. Just naïve. Their parents are probably too busy lying around the country club pool or jetting off to Europe to get their eyebrows threaded to teach them how to be productive members of society. I feel sorry for their future husbands.
On second thought, no I don’t. If they’re that stupid, they get what they deserve.
Next year, tell your daughter to make new friends.
BONUS AMY:
DEAR AMY: Responding to the topic of people's attachments to stuffed animals, when I was 5 years old, I saw Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop and fell in love with them.
About 20 years ago, my wife bought me a Lamb Chop puppet. Lamb Chop travels with me, and has been known to talk to people. You love what you love.
You never outgrow your need for Lamb Chop.
— CHUCK
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
You must clear out a room mighty fast. Well, it’s one way of getting your own seat on the train, anyway.
DEAR MARGO: I am currently engaged to a man I love everything about (well, most everything). However, his mother, who I refer to as "monster-in-law," tries to control everything. My fiance and I have a baby together, and his mother stepped in, even before the baby was born, to tell me what I had to do. For instance, she told me I was not to potty-train my child until she was 3 because she would not be ready until then. She is constantly trying to control everything, including the job my fiance has!
This is not OK with me. We have our own life with our own home, and I would like to live it that way. I’ve tried talking to her about invading our privacy, but forget that. She even resorted to calling our daughter a "mistake," saying she was born out of sin because we were not married. We were both hurt by this. My guy has tried to talk to her, but then she won’t talk to us for weeks. She brags about her other grandchildren but not our daughter because she is ashamed that we weren’t married. I want our daughter to know her grandparents, but she doesn’t need to feel less loved.
Suggestions?
— NOT GETTING THROUGH
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
I think your fiancé needs to step in and tell Piper Laurie to step off. Stop being polite, just tell her that she’s overstepping her boundaries and you’ve had it. I wouldn’t worry about her “not talking to you for weeks.” Just enjoy the silence. And change the locks.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: As a young child, my daughter Lauren was best friends with another little girl, Heather, and my wife and I enjoyed her parents as well, so we all socialized often.
As the girls hit middle and high school, Lauren joined the cheerleader squad and began to spend most of her time with that crowd of kids. Heather was not part of that group, and the two girls grew apart, and as that happened, we also spent very little time with her parents.
At graduation we discovered that Heather had garnered almost every award the school had to offer and also received a scholarship to a very prestigious university to study something like bioengineering. Lauren was an average student, and she will be attending a local community college next year to prepare for a future four-year school.
Some weeks after graduation, we received a card from Heather’s parents. It said: “Congratulations to Lauren on her high school graduation, and to you as her parents. It seems just a minute ago that the girls were flying up from Brownie scouts and now here they are ready to really spread their wings and fly.”
I thought the card was fine, but my wife insists that this is a real insult to how we did our job as parents. She has been furious about it and has been on the phone with friends and family planning how she should respond. She’s also angry at me because I don’t agree with her; she says if I was a woman I’d see this for what it was. So I thought I’d ask you if this was bad or good manners.
-MARRIED TO WITCHIE-POO
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
Your wife thinks the note is rude, because she’s a bitch and she’s projecting. Yep, that’s right – a bee-yotch. As your daughter “grew out” of her relationship with Heather, whose idea was it for you to “grow out” of your relationship with her parents? It was your wife’s, wasn’t it? Thought so.
The note her parents sent was clearly a kind attempt to reach out and fondly remember old times. The fact that your wife is reading more into it suggests that she’s somehow insecure over your daughter’s academic performance. Tough titty. Perhaps if she’d encouraged her to read and study instead of going shopping with the other cheerleaders and sticking her finger down her throat, she wouldn’t have anything to be insecure about. (Er, not that you do anyway—not at all. Of course not. *clearing throat and looking around uncomfortably*)
But your wife needs to stop blabbering about this to all her friends and plotting revenge before she makes an even bigger ass of herself.
The fact that she is mad at you suggests that she’s also unstable. But at least she recognizes that you’re not a woman, so you can assume she’s not blind as well.
When inviting our guest, we ask nothing from them other than that they bring enough money to cover one meal a day and pay for their own towel-rental fee. We cover everything else.
These last two vacations have been exhausting for me. Both times my daughter's guest did very little, if anything, to help out. The guests left their dishes lying around, wet towels on the floor and basically acted as if I was their maid. I kept saying, "This is my vacation too," but this fell on deaf ears.
Both of these girls are from financially comfortable families. My spouse and I work multiple jobs to allow our child all the extras, vacations included. What disappoints me is that neither of these girls formally thanked us. I didn't expect a gift, but feel that a handwritten thank-you card was in order.
Am I wrong?
— MIFFED MOM
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
For expecting a thank-you note from a couple of spoiled, rich bitches? No, not wrong. Just naïve. Their parents are probably too busy lying around the country club pool or jetting off to Europe to get their eyebrows threaded to teach them how to be productive members of society. I feel sorry for their future husbands.
On second thought, no I don’t. If they’re that stupid, they get what they deserve.
Next year, tell your daughter to make new friends.
BONUS AMY:
DEAR AMY: Responding to the topic of people's attachments to stuffed animals, when I was 5 years old, I saw Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop and fell in love with them.
About 20 years ago, my wife bought me a Lamb Chop puppet. Lamb Chop travels with me, and has been known to talk to people. You love what you love.
You never outgrow your need for Lamb Chop.
— CHUCK
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
You must clear out a room mighty fast. Well, it’s one way of getting your own seat on the train, anyway.
DEAR MARGO: I am currently engaged to a man I love everything about (well, most everything). However, his mother, who I refer to as "monster-in-law," tries to control everything. My fiance and I have a baby together, and his mother stepped in, even before the baby was born, to tell me what I had to do. For instance, she told me I was not to potty-train my child until she was 3 because she would not be ready until then. She is constantly trying to control everything, including the job my fiance has!
This is not OK with me. We have our own life with our own home, and I would like to live it that way. I’ve tried talking to her about invading our privacy, but forget that. She even resorted to calling our daughter a "mistake," saying she was born out of sin because we were not married. We were both hurt by this. My guy has tried to talk to her, but then she won’t talk to us for weeks. She brags about her other grandchildren but not our daughter because she is ashamed that we weren’t married. I want our daughter to know her grandparents, but she doesn’t need to feel less loved.
Suggestions?
— NOT GETTING THROUGH
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
I think your fiancé needs to step in and tell Piper Laurie to step off. Stop being polite, just tell her that she’s overstepping her boundaries and you’ve had it. I wouldn’t worry about her “not talking to you for weeks.” Just enjoy the silence. And change the locks.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: As a young child, my daughter Lauren was best friends with another little girl, Heather, and my wife and I enjoyed her parents as well, so we all socialized often.
As the girls hit middle and high school, Lauren joined the cheerleader squad and began to spend most of her time with that crowd of kids. Heather was not part of that group, and the two girls grew apart, and as that happened, we also spent very little time with her parents.
At graduation we discovered that Heather had garnered almost every award the school had to offer and also received a scholarship to a very prestigious university to study something like bioengineering. Lauren was an average student, and she will be attending a local community college next year to prepare for a future four-year school.
Some weeks after graduation, we received a card from Heather’s parents. It said: “Congratulations to Lauren on her high school graduation, and to you as her parents. It seems just a minute ago that the girls were flying up from Brownie scouts and now here they are ready to really spread their wings and fly.”
I thought the card was fine, but my wife insists that this is a real insult to how we did our job as parents. She has been furious about it and has been on the phone with friends and family planning how she should respond. She’s also angry at me because I don’t agree with her; she says if I was a woman I’d see this for what it was. So I thought I’d ask you if this was bad or good manners.
-MARRIED TO WITCHIE-POO
AARON’S ROTTEN ADVICE:
Your wife thinks the note is rude, because she’s a bitch and she’s projecting. Yep, that’s right – a bee-yotch. As your daughter “grew out” of her relationship with Heather, whose idea was it for you to “grow out” of your relationship with her parents? It was your wife’s, wasn’t it? Thought so.
The note her parents sent was clearly a kind attempt to reach out and fondly remember old times. The fact that your wife is reading more into it suggests that she’s somehow insecure over your daughter’s academic performance. Tough titty. Perhaps if she’d encouraged her to read and study instead of going shopping with the other cheerleaders and sticking her finger down her throat, she wouldn’t have anything to be insecure about. (Er, not that you do anyway—not at all. Of course not. *clearing throat and looking around uncomfortably*)
But your wife needs to stop blabbering about this to all her friends and plotting revenge before she makes an even bigger ass of herself.
The fact that she is mad at you suggests that she’s also unstable. But at least she recognizes that you’re not a woman, so you can assume she’s not blind as well.
posted by Aaron at 11:22 AM
4 Comments:
Wait until Chuck gets a Cease and Desist Order from Shari Lewis for stealing her act on the train circuit.
In the dear Amy letter they ask nothing of their guests but to pay for one meal a day and the towel rental fee. I guess in the fine print it said they would have to cook, clean and wash the windows. You're renting a condo so just leave the filth for the next family to enjoy. By the way does your daughter clean up after herself? I didn't think so.
In the Dear Margo letter you are so right about her standing up to the Monster-in-law. If not she must be prepared to hear her child called the little bastard who caused my son to go to hell. Which is exactly where she needs to tell mother-in-law to go.
The Miss Manners letter, how dare they congratulate the daughter for completing high school! We nut cases can read between the lines, they are putting the girl down by assuming High School will be the only thing she completes. They expect to see the daughter at the McDonald's drive through window. The nerve! Mom should sneak over there and key the Mercedes! They think they are so much better...uh...oh sorry. Ted
My Winnie-the-Pooh and I find that Lamb Chop one profoundly disturbing.
I'm telling you, if some guy ever pulled a Lamb Chop puppet out of his briefcase and started talking to me with it, I think I would contact the police. And I live in Chicago, which means I have a pretty high "wacko tolerance."
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