To refresh your memory (and in case I have the date wrong): “I am writing to you in the desperate hope that you or anyone you know has ever experienced sciatica…”

Most medical people won’t “give you advice” without seeing you, as medical conditions are a varied as a 120 box of crayolas.Even if you have a tentative diagnosis such as “sciatica” or “a disc that is upsetting the nerve and that surgery might be helpful,” it’s just too vague and not individualized enough to give any worthwhile advice beyond a better explaination of the anatomy of the problem, especially without seeing you in person.

I would suggest trying conservative treatment.Request (i.e., demand, politely, and don’t leave without it) that your doctor write you a prescription for physical therapy.They may be able to help, your insurance should cover it (at least at the start), and at a minimum they will spend more time with you than a doctor in the U.S. healthcare system can.They can at least explain the anatomy and what they think may be at fault.I’m not saying they can always fix the problem, but they have pretty good success.For more general info on physical therapy, try the American Physical Therapy Association at www.apta.org.

No one should have to suffer the angonizing pain of sciatica, and I find it criminal that these doctors she saw only prescribed meds without any kind of follow-up.

Concerned Physical Therapist

Dear CPT,

Thanks for your input.About two dozen other readers wrote in to suggest visiting a chiropractor and/or starting a modified yoga routine, so Drool should look into those options and see if she has any success before going under the knife.

Dear Sars,

I have a problem that only you can understand. While watching the World Series, I tend to do things like yell at the TV (things like “FRIGGING SORIANO!!!”), throw my couch cushions, and put small Yankee jerseys on my cats.

My problem is that I have a proper English boyfriend, who is horrified by my behavior. He shushes me throughout the game and tsks at me, like he is Queen Elizabeth or something. I cannot watch it in another room, as we have a typical NY-style apartment, meaning the front door hits the bed when you open it. And he is extremely cute, I mean like really gorgeous, so dumping him is not an option. I am thinking duct tape over his mouth, but any advice you can give would be appreciated.

Yours in Jeter,
Colleen

Dear Colleen,

First of all, I think you mean “FRIGGING WEAVER!!!”, because I– when the– in the eleve– FRIGGING WEAVER!!!He didn’t lose enough games for us in the regular season, now Stottlemyre’s got to gift-wrap the game for the Marlins during the World goddamn Series by sending Sylvia goddamn Plath to the mound?It’s not that I don’t sympathize, but you just don’t send a headcase to the mound in extra innings — and if you do, you tell him, “Headcase, just to review — a sinkerball IS SUPPOSED TO SINK!”

And furthermore, AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And also, GAHHHH!

The above is but a tiny sample of the bitching, wailing, pissing, moaning, garment-rending, et al. that Tempus had to listen to last night, but then again, Tempus yells “HAAATE!” every time Jeter is onscreen.And Jeter is onscreen a lot.So, you know, it balances out.But if you have a significant other who either 1) doesn’t really care about the sport you love, at all, to the point where “doesn’t really care” is really more like “actively hates”; or 2) doesn’t understand why you react so strongly to it, you have a problem.

How to solve it?Well, you can stop watching the games…hee hee!Okay, no, you can’t.You can explain to Proper English Boyfriend that it’s the postseason, that it will end soon, and if he wouldn’t mind getting a Discman, turning it up loud, and leaving you to your agonies for a week or two, you’d appreciate it; or you can go out to bars and take in the games in the company of like-minded bellowers.

At the least, shush him with the shushing.The whole city is yelling at their TVs this week; it’s not soccer, but he’s going to have to cope.

Dear Sars,

I have an online journal, and like most netizens, a network of overlapping blog/message board/journal-writing acquaintances.There’s this girl who writes excessively desperate and needy entries in her journal.Her real life sounds like a real mess.

Anyway, I ignore her suicide innuendo and “life has no meaning” monologues.She has a fondness for razor blades. She writes me and gushes about my journal several times a year. So, it’s like she’s trying to make me feel we’re friends or something.

Yesterday she posted at a message board we hang out at.”Is anyone reading my journal?Because if you aren’t, I think I’ll just take it down and forget about it.”Of course they all went there immediately and read her scary shit.I replied that she should write it for herself and to hell with the audience.Several other people told her to “check her email” and so forth.

She hinted last year she wanted to move to TX, and I had to ignore her emails for six months.What, if any, responsibility do I have as a caring human being to get her some help?Can I do it without getting any of it on me?I’ll feel awful if she hurts herself, but I can’t take this journal-as-call-for-help stuff seriously.She’s twentysomething, a grown-up.

A Friend in Fort Worth

Dear Worth,

Honestly?You don’t have any responsibility here.Many journal writers do use the internet as a way to process genuine pain, but many others use the processing of pain as a way to get attention, and it’s hard sometimes to know where to put the line — but it sounds like you’ve already decided.You care about her, but only in the abstract, and only if you don’t have to deal with the fallout.

Feeling that way doesn’t make you a bad person, but don’t pretend you feel otherwise; don’t pretend you want to help her when, really, you don’t.It sounds like others in your community have rallied around her, so she does have a support system of sorts in place, and as long as she doesn’t mistakenly think that she can count on you for that, I think sympathizing from a distance is perfectly appropriate.

Dear Sars:

I need your help with a family/wedding problem!

I’m the big sister — we’re all way grown-ups now, but of course the sib relationships endure. I have a brother near my age, a sister nearly near my age, and we have a “baby” sister who is 12 years younger than I am. She has been everyone’s darling, and everyone’s joy her entire life, and now the painful situation involves her. I’ll call her “Baby,” but I don’t mean it in a derogatory way.

Baby appeared to have it all, the elusive trifecta of Career, Kids and Romance (married to the kids’ dad for 12 years).About two years ago, very suddenly — literally overnight — she announced that she didn’t love her husband any more and was divorcing him. No one saw it coming, she had never shared or indicated any concerns, problems, or unhappiness. In fact, she made great efforts to present the appearance that everything was terrific. Her husband was stunned and offered to do anything to help, including of course going to counselling. She told him that it was too late, that she didn’t love him any more and there was nothing that he could do about it. And, yes, she pretty much laid it out to him that plainly.

As the Big Sister, I begged her to take things a little more thoughtfully and to give the guy and the marriage some kind of chance. Not because I liked her husband particularly; he had a lot of good qualities but he was very high-maintenance, didn’t treat our mom very well, stuff like that. But here’s the main point of this story: Baby’s kids are beloved to me, just an eyelash difference from how much I love my own son. I am their godmother too, which is an empty title, I know, but still I take it seriously. And Husband, despite his other flaws, was as loving and devoted a daddy as you would ever know. I wanted Baby to at least give Husband a chance to resolve things, before she turned the kids’ lives inside out so suddenly and so drastically.

She wouldn’t consider it, and to no one’s surprise — you’ve probably already guessed — it turns out that she had a boyfriend all along. She started bringing him to family functions almost immediately, and moved in with him within two months after her divorce was final. Now they’re getting married.

Sars, I’m not being the Moral Police here. I’m divorced myself, and so is Other Sister. I fervently believe that everyone has a right to be happy, and I know that there is nothing more lonely than a bad marriage. I know all of this. I don’t care whom she marries, or sleeps with, or any of that. EXCEPT that the new guy — I’ll call him “the Walrus,” because that’s how we actually do refer to him amongst ourselves — is lousy with the kids. I have observed this myself, and so has every other family member and our close family friends. I’m not exaggerating for drama here. There is not one single person that I know of that thinks he’s good with the kids, or loves them. He appears to resent them, he treats them with indifference, and his main interaction with them is to correct them on small things every chance he gets, and to compete with them for Baby’s attention. We had an “intervention” and it didn’t do any good, except of course to make Baby furious and the Walrus defensive. Wally said that he was aloof with the kids because he “didn’t want to look like a child molester,” which creeped me out even more than I already was.

So, the family has a wedding approaching and we have been unable to decide how best to handle it. Up until now, we have been close and supportive through some very thick and thin times all these years and survived everything with love.Baby is pretty much demanding that we attend and act like we like it, or she will hold a grudge. Mom is going to go with the “hope for the best” attitude that her generation was raised on. Brother is going to go, unhappily, to be Mom’s escort. Other Sister isn’t going, and presented a work excuse that got her off the hook.

These are my choices, and where I need your thoughts: a) attend b) don’t attend, but offer an excuse, or c) don’t attend, because I don’t think she should marry this guy and I don’t want any part of it.If I choose a) or b), I run the risk of facing a life of Permanent Pretending. If I choose c), there will be bad blood in the fam to the extent that we have not known before, although Baby would never deprive me of seeing the kids.Besides feeling that a) and b) are hypocritical, I’m inclining toward c) because I want the kids to know, at least on some level, that there is someone in the family that doesn’t like their new stepdad. If everybody else in the family is pretending that he’s okay, and things go bad for the kids at home, I take some comfort in thinking that they would know they could talk to me about it (they’re both old enough to phone, and one can email me). I’m an RN, and I know painfully well that many kids live in varying levels of abuse because they don’t think that anyone will believe them or help them.

So, I’ve basically made my decision but it’s a big one, and I’m not that confident about it. I respect you so much! Please let me know what your thoughts are…

Not So Much The Big Sister As The Crazy Protective Godmother

Dear Godmother,

Letting your godchildren know that you’ve got their backs is the best idea, but skipping the wedding isn’t the way to go about that, especially if Baby seems prepared to take a failure to attend as a declaration of war.You don’t think she’ll keep you away from the kids, but you didn’t think she’d divorce their father, either — I wouldn’t test that theory if I were you.

Go to the wedding.You don’t have to make a big old fake-ola show of your happiness for the couple, but show up.Keep the peace; hang out with your mom.And talk to the kids — not at the wedding, but maybe a few days before or after.How frankly you speak to them about the Walrus depends on their ages, I think, and in any case it’s probably best not to trash-talk him if you can help it, but do tell them that they can always call you or come to you with problems, no matter what, whenever they need to.

You don’t have to like or approve of the Walrus, but making the best of the situation is probably the best strategy as far as being there for the kids.

I was always taught in elementary school that, when writing out a list composed of three or more items, a comma before the “and” preceding the ultimate word in the list is necessary (i.e., “I went to the grocery store and bought apples, oranges, and bananas”).I’ve always used this format when writing, and have found it sufficient, but of late I’ve noticed a whole lot of missing commas.Is it “apples, oranges and bananas” or “apples, oranges, and bananas”?

Which brings to mind ANOTHER question.I was also always taught that, when ending a sentence with a quotation, the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, even though they are not part of the quote.For example, “How do you tell a friend to ‘just say no?'”I’ve seen a lot of periods and question marks following quotations, and would like clarification.

Thanks a bunch,
Grammar Disciple

Dear GD,

The comma before the “and” is known as the Oxford or Harvard comma.Opinion is divided as to whether it’s strictly necessary; The New Yorker uses it, but a lot of daily papers don’t bother.In my view, it’s required, because, as Garner points out, while leaving it out may cause “ambiguity,” including it never will, and “virtually all nonjournalist writing authorities recommend keeping it[.]”

A more pertinent example is a series composed of compounds, i.e. “A and B, C and D, and E and F.”Without that last comma, it sounds C through F are grouped together, which isn’t the intent; the idea behind the serial comma is to demonstrate that each element of the list is discrete.

Short answer: You need it.

When ending a sentence with a quotation, the punctuation that belongs to the quotation goes inside the quotation marks; all other punctuation goes outside it.The example you cite ends a question with a quotation, but the quotation itself is not interrogative (“just say no” is not a question here), so the proper punctuation is as follows: “How do you tell a friend to ‘just say no’?”In the case of a quotation that does end in a question, you punctuate like so: “That fails to answer the question: ‘How do you tell a friend to say no?'”(In both cases, the question mark obviates the need for any other punctuation; a period in the first example is not indicated.)

In American English, it’s safe always to put commas and periods inside quotation marks, and colons and semicolons outside, at the end of a quotation; question marks and exclamation points depend on the material quoted.

[10/23/03]

Share!