My sister taught me this foolproof single comment for
when you see a friend in really bad theater: “I’m so glad I got to see you in this!”
So vague, and in a bad way, true.

I’m sure it can be modified for written crap.

Sara

Dear Sara,

Heh.Good one.

So, Sars. Here I am writing to you for words of wisdom (and perhaps a slap upside the head) — and you would think I could figure out this shit on my own, but…

Anyway. I’ve been divorced since my little one was about six months old. She’s now seven years old. Yes, seven years old. Shut up, it’s not about that. It’s about that for all this freakin’ time I’ve put up with his SHIT, and I am truly sick and tired of it. Like, how he took me back to court to modify his pick up time from noon to 11 AM, but still doesn’t show up before noon, anyway. One freakin’ day a week. Like how I get a whopping $69 a week for two (count ’em, two) kids (no that’s not a typo).Like how I get no alimony (I just wanted OUT because I was tired of being his mother too), and I’m paying a $1200-a-month mortgage.Like how he NEVER even offers to buy them new shoes/clothes/pencils/crayons/notebooks for school. NOTHING.

And NOW, my lovely little ones inform me, Daddy is getting a ROOMMATE.Oh no, not a female one (I’ve been secretly begging the gods to throw a halfway decent woman into his path so that maybe he’ll just leave US alone), but a MALE one. Someone he met at work (he’s had this job for maybe five months, after not working for more than two years. Another story in itself).Someone about whom I know NOTHING.And now I am expected to just let him take my girls (the older one is 10) to his house where this other person will be, who I know not from a freakin’ hole in the wall?! I am not mildly incensed, here.I am ENRAGED.

He says he’s doing this for financial reasons — his parents GAVE him this house, fer god’s sake! It’s paid for, in FULL.All he has to pay for is utilities and food. WTF?!As it is, when he does take them for his Sunday afternoon visits, the majority of the time, when they go to his house, according to my girls, he is ON THE COMPUTER. Playing EVERQUEST.While my girls are playing with Legos and/or coloring and/or playing with his cats (he has three), which in itself is all right, I guess, but if he is going to spend time with them, I want him to spend TIME with them, not play on his freakin’ COMPUTER! And now there’s going to be a stranger thrown into the mix?? A young MALE stranger??Call me paranoid, call me over-protective (my Goddess-given right as a mother, and anyone who tells me different is an asshole), but I DON’T like this.

I have a call in to my lawyer, but I don’t know what, if any, recourse I have.If you were me, how would you handle this? Because right now, I’m totally beside myself.It also doesn’t help me to know that this young man is Hispanic. Not that I’m prejudiced, mind you, but I have known some of that persuasion and they were a LOT left of center, if you know what I mean. Even the women.Am I wrong to be wary of this situation?My heart tells me no, and that I need to do something, but I’m damned if I know what. ANY ideas?

Thanks so much for your time,
SO freakin wigged…

Dear Wig,

How about switching to decaf, for starters?

And get a goddamn grip on yourself.So your ex-husband is getting a — gasp! — Hispanic roommate.So what?What have you got to fear from that, exactly — that your kids might learn Spanish for free?”Not prejudiced,” my bony white ass.If you worry about your kids’ safety around the new roommate, worry because he’s a stranger, not because he’s Hispanic.

If you don’t like the way your husband treats your divorce arrangements, or your kids, sit down and talk to him like a rational person about those things.Ask him to show up on time.Ask him to put in better-quality face time with the shorties.Ask him what he knows about the roommate’s background, if the guy’s good with kids, if he’s generally trustworthy.

If you don’t like the financial split, call your lawyer and ask if you can do better.Stop screeching and fuming and whining about the unfairness of it all, and stop complaining about your shiftless ex-husband in front of the kids.”But I didn’t say –“Whatever.I know you do that shit.Stop it.

This isn’t about maternal paranoia.This is about you turning into the woman who would rather obsess over all the shit her ex is allegedly “getting away with” than live her own life like a grown-up.One minute you’re all pissy because he’s not involved enough, the next you want him married off to another woman so he’ll “leave you alone” — what exactly do you want from him?More importantly, why — so you can beat him somehow?Wrong priority, lady.You’ve had six years to figure out that your ex doesn’t do things for the express purpose of annoying you, and to figure out what you need from him for your children.Figure it out already.

I just discovered this site and although a lot of the archived
letters have struck a chord with me, I’ve got a problem I haven’t seen
you answer yet. So here goes…

I’ve been dating “John” for over four years now — we started way back at
the beginning of college, and now we’re both in grad school. Long story
short, we had a bad semester at the end of college when he decided
(probably correctly, but still painful) that we were too dependent on
each other for a social life, and that he still had “things he needed to
experience.” He basically dumped me (and vacillated about it, which made
things even worse), and then we got back together at graduation — we
ended up in the same city for grad school, an honest coincidence. We did
make a point of spending a semester totally apart in grad school, to
make sure we made our own friends, and then we got back together.

Fast forward to now. It’s nearing the end of our first year of grad
school, and we’ve been seeing each other again for a semester. We’re
more attached than ever, and I’ve gotten over my issues of being
dependent on him, I hope. The problem is, we’re both in the process of
looking for apartments for next year, and we’re both strapped for
roommates. Now, I don’t want to live with him — I think it’s a bad idea,
given our respective locations, and hours, the fact that I’ll be done a
few years before he will, and the bad possibility of us becoming too
dependent on each other again — but I’m really upset by the fact that
he’s planning on living with a female friend of his from college,
“Jane.”

I knew her, she was nice, he met her his sophomore year and
always took care of her like a little sister. But he also frequently
used to mention how pretty she was, and since she lived next door to him
they spent a lot of time together. They were always affectionate, so
much so that one of my visiting friends once jokingly asked him, “How
many girlfriends do you have, anyway?” The joke was in poor taste, but
that situation should never have occurred, regardless. On a few
occasions he’s accidentally called me by her name in conversation. It
really bugs me. He knows it does, and apologizes sincerely every time,
but it still bugs me.

I know he isn’t interested in her romantically, and she isn’t interested
in him, but I still don’t like the idea of them living together, just
the two of them. I feel like by choosing to live with her, he’s tacitly
acknowledging that their relationship is more stable than ours. Besides,
I remember how left out I felt back in college when he’d come home
upset, go over to spend time with her, and not even call me to tell me
how he was doing until the next day. I feel like I’m being irrational,
but I can’t help being jealous of the idea that he feels close enough to
a girl to move in with her, and it’s not me. (Yeah, I know the other
constraints I mentioned aren’t there with her, but it still feels like
rejection.) I can’t ask him not to live with her — he has no one else to
live with next year — but I don’t want to have this prey on my mind.
I’ve told him how I feel, he’s assured me that I am the most important
girl in his life, but I just know I’ll be bitter once they actually move
in. Maybe if there were a third person in the house — anyone — it
wouldn’t upset me so much.

What do I do with this? Am I being irrational in not wanting them to
live together? Go ahead, give me a kick in the pants, maybe it’ll get me
off my self-pity train…

Beloved, but Bothered

Dear Bothered,

I had an answer all ready to go, pointing out that a guy doesn’t have to live with another girl in order to cheat on you and that, well, you didn’t want to move in with John yourself, so what do you expect…but I scrapped it.New answer: Break up with John.

Your entire relationship right now is focused on not appearing “too dependent.”It’s not a relationship; it’s a series of tests that you stand the idea of failing.I think you really wanted to move in with John, but you felt like you couldn’t say so because you thought he might freak out, so you pretended you didn’t want that.I think you really want to tell him, look, I’d rather you didn’t live with her because you know how I feel about that whole thing and it’s going to exclude me, but you felt like you couldn’t say so because he’d call it “dependent” and refuse to entertain the idea.And I think the whole “spending a semester apart to make your own friends” idea probably came from John, not you.Hello — it’s a relationship, not beta testing.

I mean, whose definition of “dependent” do you use?John’s, it sounds like, and I understand that certain relationships can get suffocating, but if he feels suffocated…let him go get some air, permanently.It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s right, that you really do cling too much or whatever; it just means that the two of you don’t want the same things.Start asking for what you want and need emotionally.If John’s all, “Back off,” well, back off.Keep backing until you bump into another guy.

Hi Sars,

I edit marketing stuff for a tech company, and frequently folks here will
use “they,” “their,” “them,” et cetera when referring to other companies. For
example, “Company X is our main competitor, but we think they suck rocks and
plan to destroy them and make them cry like tiny babies.”

I tend to replace “they” with “it” or “the company,” or repeat the company’s
name where necessary. Some of my coworkers think this is being picky, and
argue that “they” is more or less accepted as a singular pronoun when
there’s no good alternative. But while I can almost see the need to use
“they” to avoid saying “he or she” all over the place, it just seems wrong
to me to use it to refer to singular entities like companies.

So is this usage really as bad as I think, or am I just cranky because I’m
editing a sales guide at 8 PM on a Thursday?

Signed,
I guess the two aren’t mutually exclusive

Dear Exclusive,

I think it’s the latter.A company is itself a singular, but because a company is usually composed of more than one person, a plural works too.If Company X posts quarterly earnings reports, for example, you might say, “Company X posted its quarterly earnings reports this morning,” because the reports belong to the company collectively.But you could also say that “Company X posted their quarterly earnings reports this morning,” because presumably more than one person contributed to those reports.

Garner notes that viewing collective nouns like “company” in the plural is more of a British practice than an American one, and that “the singular is the usual form” in the States.But he also makes a point of saying that “the main consideration is skillfully handling them is consistency in the use of a singular or plural verb.”In other words, in any given document, sticking to a choice between singular or plural throughout is more important than the choice itself.

So, the singular is “more correct” than the plural: “[I]t is hardly wrong to say that with certain collective nouns, singular verbs are preferred.But you can’t be doctrinaire on this point of usage.”

Short answer: Unless there’s a continuity issue, let it go.

Hey Sars,

A while ago, I met my dream guy. He’s soft-spoken, bashful, and terribly sweet — basically all that I’ve ever looked for. I can see myself spending the rest of my life with him. But here’s the rub: First, I’m not very experienced in relationships or dating or anything like that. Second, things aren’t going well between us. In fact, they’re not going at all.

It started off well. We met and seemed to click, kind of. I asked him out to coffee and he agreed. At the date, we chatted and seemed to get along well, but then he cut it off after an hour, saying that there’s a sickly friend he had promised to see. I was a bit bugged by that, but he’s a sincere guy (from what I can tell) and I could see no reason to disbelieve him. We vaguely made plans for there to be a second date and went our separate ways.

Later that evening, he told me online that he was going to be busy the rest of the week, but he should probably free the next week. Okay, I thought, and held off on making any immediate plans.

The next weekend, I called him up and left a message on his machine asking if he would be free sometime next week? He sent me a reply that basically said that he was going to be busy next week, but he would be free next weekend. I did the follow-up and asked him if he was going to be free on Saturday? He then replied that he was going to be busy then after all. He’s very sorry about that.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it too, so on the Friday, I went to see him in person and try to get everything out in the open. I frankly told him that I really liked him, but I wasn’t interested in going out with someone who wasn’t interested in me and that if he doesn’t want me pursuing him, then he should tell me in so many words. He replied that he was kind of holding back because he was really busy at the moment, and he didn’t want to do anything halfheartedly. He said that he wants to wait until he has more time to focus on a relationship before starting one, but he did really want to start something. I told him that I could live with that and that’s okay.

Except…they’re not. It’s been over a month since we went out for coffee and in that time, we have spoken less and less. The last time I saw him in person in the past three weeks was an accident more than anything else, when I bumped into him on the street on campus (we’re both university students, but I’ve been told that his major is a lot more hectic than mine). We had a sort of agreement to keep in touch online, but he hardly ever IMs me or emails. I always have to IM or email him first in order to get a response. It’s been part of a strange pattern since the very beginning: he’s always receptive in person, but his actions seem to say otherwise.

My friends have generally given me some negative advice on the issue. They tell me that he’s not worth it, that he isn’t really interested, that he’s dragging me around like I’m his parachute, and that he’s stopping me from being open to other relationships, but…I don’t know. I guess what stops me from calling it quits is the fact that he really is my dream guy, and that I don’t want to lose my chance with him just because I wasn’t patient enough to wait another month or two. I mean, it is a busy time for him, and my schedule is admittedly a cakewalk compared with his.

So, yeah, I really don’t know what I should do or if I should do anything at all. I’d like to talk to the guy about all my doubts and concerns, but I don’t want to start sounding all neurotic and scare him off. Besides, we’ve already discussed it; it’s my fault that I’m coming apart at the the seams.

Waiting And Waiting

Dear Waiting,

People make time for what matters to them, and he hasn’t made time for you.Shouldn’t your “dream guy” feel the same way about you?He doesn’t.Talking to him again won’t change that.Move on.

Dear Sars,

I am currently attending classes to obtain a literature/writing degree.Could you recommend some volumes that would help me build a great reference library?

I know you already recommend Garner and Writer’s Market.What else would be helpful?

Thanks,
Getting my feet wet

Dear Wet,

For a broad range of literary, cultural, and writing reference, here’s what I’d recommend in addition to Garner:

1. A standardized dictionary in a recent edition (i.e. Webster’s Tenth or Eleventh Collegiate — I actually prefer the 10C)

2. The Chicago Manual of Style.Annoying on topics of grammar, frankly, but indispensable for things like footnote formatting and correct citation.

3. A thesaurus (or the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary — the hardcover version)

4. The Norton Anthology of English Literature (all volumes…sorry)

5. The Norton Anthology of Poetry

6. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

7. The Bible

8. An atlas

9. Strunk & White (many people, myself included, prefer the earlier editions, so try to find a third)

10. Zinsser’s On Writing Well

Other volumes you might find helpful include medical dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, and foreign-language-to-English dictionaries; Larousse’s Dictionary of Writers, books on sign language, “cop-speak,” birds, and botany; old dictionaries with engravings and old sets of encyclopedias; and a film compendium (Halliwell or Thomson).

But I’d start with a dictionary, the Garner, and a Norton or two.That should hold you.

[9/18/03]

Share!