In “honor” of Valentine’s Day being Sunday, following is an article I wrote in 2002 for a Writing for Magazines course I took in college.
Me next! Me next!
Have you ever experienced that feeling? It’s an emotion I associate with P.E. class in elementary school where we all stood in a line while the two team captains for kick-ball chose their teams. Every time a name was called, I hoped to hear mine next, but it didn’t usually get called until after everyone else was chosen. After a few years, I gave up on the idea of being chosen anything but last—not just in P.E., but in life. My mother always told me that one day, when that “special someone” came along, I’d get to experience what it’s like to be chosen first.
I’m still waiting on my turn. The disappointment associated with the “my turn syndrome” was learned early in my life, although, it doesn’t usually bother me that I’m still single at my age. However, I start to feel the onset of the “my turn syndrome” as soon as Kroger takes the Christmas candy and decorations down and replaces them with heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and oversized teddy bears.
In second grade, I remember the shoeboxes we decorated for the annual Valentine’s card exchange. Each child was given a list of names of all of the children in the class with a note on the top to instruct our parents that we were to bring a card for each child in the class. I got Mom to take me to Safeway where I picked out a box of small cut-out Looney-Toon cards. When I got home, I dumped them on the table and sorted through them, setting aside the potentially embarrassing ones to give to girls and the more innocuous ones to give to boys. I had to be very choosy because there was one little boy I liked; his card had to be just perfect.
The next morning, with all of the cards sealed in their little white envelopes, I found it hard to concentrate during the morning, too excited about the party I’d looked forward to all week. I eagerly hoped to find a special card from that same little boy with maybe an extra little note written on it, like I had done on his.
Party time finally came. I was excited as I went around depositing cards into every classmate’s box. We weren’t allowed to open the cards at school—we had to take them home. I could hardly wait. Had he given me a special Valentine? For the second time in as many days, a box of Valentines got dumped on the dining room table as soon as I got home. I counted them… twenty-three. But I had prepared twenty-eight cards last night, one for every other student in the class. One of the five that I didn’t get was from him… the little boy I liked.
This was my first experience with the “my turn syndrome” and the first time I realized that everything I had been programmed to believe about Valentine’s Day wasn’t true. Of course, childhood disappointment is offset with the hope that my turn will come in the teenage years.
Since most TV shows in the 1980s showed romance blossoming when a girl was in high school, I hoped my turn was soon to come. In eleventh grade, I was assigned a locker in the “locker corridor” in my large public high school. It was where all of the important and popular kids had lockers. It was too crowded to try to get to my locker between classes, but it allowed me to learn where the locker of the boy I had a crush on was, and he knew where mine was. We spoke to each other occasionally in passing, and I hoped he liked me, too.
Surely now it would be my turn. By lunch time on Valentine’s Day, the first time I was able to get back to my locker since before first period, almost all of the lockers surrounding mine had some kind of flower—some were roses, some were carnations—stuck by the stem into the vents on the locker doors. Mine did not.
I consoled myself with the thought that maybe my turn would come later. After three and a half years of not having my turn in college, I went into the work world and realized that the chances at getting my turn were becoming fewer and fewer.
The next thing I know, my thirtieth birthday had come and gone and I’m still waiting for my turn. During the days before Valentine’s Day, I avoid the Seasonal Products aisle at Kroger between January 1 and February 14. I change the channel when Hallmark commercials come on. I try to refrain from making the finger-down-the-throat motion when the girl in the next cubicle at work talks about the romantic evening her boyfriend has planned for her. I roll my eyes and change the subject when someone mentions Valentine’s Day. I turn my head when the flowers and balloons are delivered. I camp out at home rather than endure the humiliation of attending the church Valentine’s Day Banquet alone.
Valentine’s Day is the holiday that feels like it was designed specifically to remind me of everything I don’t have instead of giving me the hope that someday it will be my turn.
So what can I do to save myself the cycle of negativity and anxiety that I associate with Valentine’s Day?
When I asked my pastor this, he pointed me to John 15:18-19: “‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’” (NIV)
At first, I thought, Gee, thanks for reminding me that the world hates me, but then I read further and deeper. The point wasn’t that the world hates me, but that, in fact, I have been chosen. My turn came almost two thousand years before I was born.
Therefore, this Valentine’s Day when I see the red hearts, I will think of Jesus’ heart that was broken for me. When I see the beautiful roses, I will think of the crown of thorns He wore for me. When I see others receiving boxes of chocolate, I will think of how sweet my Savior’s love is for me.
Thank you, Jesus, for giving me my turn.
First things first, congratulations to Faith McLellan, who suggested the name Phoebe for Zarah’s sister in Love Remains. Faith will receive the first signed copy of the book when it comes out later this year! Final results of the poll can be found here.
Now, for anyone who’s been hanging around this blog for a while, you know that I have a “thing” for Food Network and certain celebrity chefs. So I thought today (since I’ve promised a few people that I won’t spend all the the Fridays this spring blogging about this week’s episode of LOST—either because they aren’t caught up and don’t want the spoilers or they don’t care) I would count down my top five favorite celebrity chefs.
5. Rick Bayless—This chef entered my consciousness first as a guest judge on my absolute favorite cooking show, Top Chef (Bravo TV) and then as a contestant himself on the Top Chef: Masters season. Rick Bayless, unlike a lot of celebrity chefs, is very soft-spoken and quiet, unusual in a career that seems to draw big personalities and even bigger egos. Raised in Oklahoma, Bayless majored in Spanish and Latin American studies in college—even pursued his Ph.D. in Anthropological Linguistics. He and his wife lived in Mexico for six years, which is where Bayless developed his passion for cooking traditional Mexican cuisine. For the past two decades, Bayless has championed traditional Latin flavors while creating a unique cuisine that I would love the chance to sample one day at one of his restaurants.
4. John Besh—As a premiere chef in New Orleans, John Besh’s name is one that I’d heard for several years before he showed up on my TV as a contestant in the first Next Iron Chef competition in 2007. Besh grew up in Slidell, Louisiana (on the northeast side of Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans), and enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves after graduating from high school. He saw ten months of active duty in 1990–1991 during Desert Storm and participated in the capture of Kuwait International Airport. After he returned, he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America. In 1999, he was named one of the Ten Best New Chefs in America by Food & Wine magazine, and in 2006, he was named the Best Chef in the Southeast by the James Beard Foundation. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Besh returned quickly to New Orleans and, in addition to helping coordinate efforts to clean up and rebuild his and other restaurants, he cooked and served food to relief workers and participated in several fundraisers around the country to support the relief efforts. Besh came in second on Next Iron Chef and didn’t make it to the final round of Top Chef: Masters, but he’s definitely a Top Iron Chef to me.
3. Chef Bobby Flay—Are you ready for a Throwdown? It wasn’t so long ago that Bobby Flay was some redheaded upstart with a grilling show on during the midday segment. Then, all of a sudden, he had three or four shows going. Then he became an Iron Chef—and he was indestructible. Flay started early in the restaurant industry, getting his first restaurant job at seventeen. In 1984, he was a member of the first graduating class of the French Culinary Institute (NYC). He opened his first restaurant, Mesa Grill, in 1991, and it was named Best New Restaurant in 1992 by New York Magazine restaurant critic Gael Green. In 1993, he earned the Outstanding Graduate Award from FIC and the Rising Star Chef award from the James Beard Foundation, recognizing him as one of the country’s most accomplished chefs under 30. With more than half a dozen restaurants across the country (and the Bahamas), and almost as many shows on Food Network (it seems), Bobby Flay is one of the most recognizable chefs in the United States. And even though he does have the big personality and big ego that are typical for big-time executive chefs and restaurateurs, he has a good sense of humility to go with it—which makes him seem like he’d be a fun person to hang out with. And there are very few things I’ve seen him make on TV that I wouldn’t want to eat.
2. Chef Tyler Florence—For anyone who’s looked at the casting post or heard me talk about the inspiration for Menu for Romance, I know you’ll be shocked that he’s not the #1 chef on this list. A 1991 graduate of Johnson & Wales University in South Carolina, Florence worked in Charleston for a couple of years, then moved to New York City to work as an executive chef in a succession of acclaimed restaurants, winning awards and acclaim for himself. While working at Cibo restaurant, he had his first opportunity to appear on a program on the fledgling Food Network. By 1999, he was employed full-time by the network, hosting the shows How to Boil Water and Food 911 (the show which led me to start thinking about a certain character named Major O’Hara). Katie Couric once called Florence “the sexiest man to ever pick up a chef’s knife.” At one time, I agreed until . . .
1. Chef Robert Irvine—My favorite celebrity chef started his culinary career at age fifteen when he enlisted in the Royal Navy. He served as a cook aboard Her Majesty’s Royal Yacht Brittania. His first “Dinner Impossible” happened when the yacht was called to provide relief efforts during an uprising in Yemen in 1986, when he was twenty-one years old. He was informed that more than 4,000 evacuees were waiting for transport on the beach and needed to be fed. With no mobile kitchen and only the food stores available on the yacht, Irvine had to improvise. “There were undisguised elements of the story of the loaves and fishes in this challenge, and I took some of my cues from the similarities.” After taking inventory of the food available, and pulling out what he could cook in bulk (beans and rice) he needed something to cook them in. “In those moments, it helps to break your problem down to the absolute basics. Need very big pots. Metal. What’s big, can hold lots of food, and is made of metal? Wait for it . . . garbage cans.” Yes, he found half a dozen brand-new aluminum garbage cans in the hold of the ship and used those to cook all that food and feed those people. And these kinds of challenges seem to have been the theme of his life, leading him to finally find recognition and fame as the chef who takes on impossible catering challenges every week on Dinner Impossible. Aside from the fact that he’s the sexiest man to ever pick up a chef’s knife (gotta love those tight black T-shirts!), and despite the British accent, what I love about Chef Robert Irvine is the way that he can get things done without alienating people.
Sure, he yells, sometimes, but then he makes sure the non-professionals helping him understand what he needs done without making them feel stupid or belittled (unlike how Gordon Ramsay does it on Hell’s Kitchen, which is why I won’t watch that show and why Gordon Ramsay isn’t on this list, even though I love his shows on BBC-A). Plus, Chef Irvine has a great sense of humor, about himself and about life in general, it seems. He also has a big heart to go along with those big “guns.”
Addendum: I can’t believe I didn’t think to add this video last night when I wrote this. After watching the following video last fall, I sent my mom an e-mail telling her I wanted to go to Robert’s house for Thanksgiving instead of home:
I had just set my bowl of soup down on the table beside my chair. The local news broadcast informed me that all of the schools in Nashville and all surrounding areas are closed again tomorrow. And someone knocked on the front door. My heart hammered a little bit. Who would be knocking on my front door at dinnertime—and after dark? (Well, it was almost completely dark.)
As it turned out, it was my very cute, very sweet UPS guy, running about three hours late (he’s almost always here by 3 p.m. whenever he has something for me—maybe once or twice a week) because of the icy road conditions. I was very surprised, because I wasn’t expecting anything from any of the publishing houses I write/freelance for, and the only thing I’ve ordered recently is a new office chair—and I only ordered that yesterday. And from the size of the box, I knew it definitely wasn’t the 50-lb.-shipping-weight chair.
As soon as I bade Mr. UPS good-bye and entreated him to be careful, I brought the box in, extremely curious as to what was inside—especially once I saw it was from Barbour.
To my very great astonishment, I opened the box to see this:
A case of Little Whispers of Comfort for Busy Women, a gift book I compiled for Barbour last year!
LWCBW is one of those projects that comes along every so often that’s not only fun to work on but an uplifting experience at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed the hours I spent at the library surrounded by huge books of quotations and poetry, lyrics, and prose as I found those that were both inspirational and comforting to me personally. Here are just a few samples:
So I’d like to do another drawing (unfortunately, the three lovely ladies who just won the previous contest are going to have to sit this one out, just to be fair to everyone else—you can still participate by posting a comment, your names just won’t be included in the drawing).
Share one of your favorite inspirational/comforting quotes—one that you have posted on your mirror or beside your computer or written down on a piece of paper stuck in your Bible—by midnight tonight (Central time, of course), and I’ll draw FIVE names to receive a signed copy of Little Whispers of Comfort for Busy Women. Be sure to let us know where the quote comes from (who said/wrote it, what the Bible reference is, etc.) and why it means so much to you.
Comments made on this post before midnight PACIFIC time (1 a.m. Mountain/2 a.m. Central/3 a.m. Eastern) will count toward the contest!
It’s been snowing all day in Nashville. Originally, they forecast us to be on the snow/ice line—which usually means we get what looks like a dusting because it’s all sleet. Well, it was supposed to start as sleet/freezing rain around 11 a.m. this morning (according to local forecasters/TWC) as sleet/freezing rain and then change over to snow in the afternoon, with accumulations in town (I live six miles from downtown) of two to four inches, and six to eight north of town.
Knowing it wasn’t supposed to start until later in the morning, I went ahead and put in an online order for a prescription I hadn’t realized I was about to run out of, thinking I’d pick it up around 10 a.m., before the “major winter weather event” happened.
Well . . . this is what I discovered when I was ready to walk out of the house at 10:30 to run to Kroger to get my prescription:
So I didn’t think it was worth the risk. But at two o’clock, when my UPS delivery came, I noticed that the street didn’t look nearly as bad, even though it had been snowing steadily all day:
So I made a Kroger run and got my ’scrip, along with milk and bacon, because I was going to run out before the weekend was over (and no milk means NO COFFEE—which is NOT acceptable). Between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m., I could hear that the precipitation had changed over to sleet, but the forecasters were saying that it would only last a short time before changing back to snow. And by 9:30, when I went out to capture these photos, it was a mix of sleet and snow:
And with the flash turned on, you can see it’s still coming down!
This is going to be an extraordinarily long post, because I’ve been writing these questions down for quite some time as I’ve re-watched the first five seasons of the show (and this list barely scratches the surface). Some are ponderings, some are genuine story questions, and some are facetious. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which they are.
Who are the bodies in the cave? My guesses: Rose and Bernard, Eloise and Charles, Jack and Kate, or Sawyer and Juliet.
Are John and Ben half-brothers? (I believe Emily Locke and Emily Linus are the same person.)
What did Desmond do that got him court-martialed, put in prison, and dishonorably discharged from the Royal Scots Brigade?
What happened to Claire?
Who was the “man in black” with Jacob?
What is the smoke monster? Is it the smoke monster that’s appearing as all the dead characters?
What role will Desmond play in fixing things?
Did Ben marry Annie, and did she die in child birth, leading to Ben’s obsession with finding out why women on the island die during pregnancy?
Was the explosion of the nuclear bomb at the end of Season 5 the “incident” mentioned in the Swan station orientation film? Did the bomb actually explode or did the electromangnetic phenomenon create a “time flash” in which everything reset?
In what way(s) is Walt “special,” and will he return to the island in some form/time?
What lies in the shadow of the statue?
Who, exactly is Richard Alpert, and how is it that he never ages? Did he come to the island on the Black Rock?
How did Jacob get off the island?
What roles are Aaron and Ji Yeon to play? Is there something significant about the four children that have been born since the beginning of the show (Aaron, Ji Yeon, Clementine, and Charlie)?
What is the significance of the off-island crossovers of the characters before the crash?
What/who are the whispers?
What is Tom’s—Aaron’s father—connection with Charles Widmore?
Why did Radzinsky kill himself?
Did Ben really kill Jacob? If the explosion of the nuclear bomb resets time, will anything on the island ever have happened?
Why is Eloise Hawking working with Ben Linus to get everyone back to the island? Is she hoping that by helping them she can change time and won’t kill her own son in 1977?
Where do the Dharma food drops come from?
Did anyone ever find the seagull with the SOS note Claire sent in Season 3?
What is the significance of the “lists” and who’s on them and who isn’t?
Are Desmond’s flashes caused by the same phenomenon as Daniel’s memory loss? Is the reason Desmond can’t remember the year he visited Daniel at Oxford the beginning of the memory loss phenomenon?
What is the circle of ash around Jacob’s cabin for? Why did Jacob say, “Help me” to John? (Was it really Jacob?)
Is Jacob the “magnificent man” Ben and Mikhail spoke of?
How did the Others get such detailed information on each of the survivors?
Did Claire agree to stay on the island in exchange for Jacob healing her mother?
Who was Libby?
Why was ABC/Disney so chintzy on the packaging for the Season 5 DVDs? Seasons 1–4 have nice plastic sleeves for their outside packaging—but Season 5 has a cheap cardboard sleeve.
What’s up with Christian Shephard?
Is Richard Malkin really a psychic? Did he put Claire on that plane because he “knew” it would crash on the island and that’s where Aaron was supposed to be born?
What happened to Desmond’s vision of Claire and the baby getting on the helicopter and leaving the island?
What is the “sickness” and the vaccine?
How did the journal of the Black Rock’s first officer get off the island? Were the “pirates” on whose ship it was found connected with the Others?
Why is Ethan’s last name Rom and not Goodspeed?
How is Desmond Daniel’s Constant? How did Daniel know about Desmond before Daniel ever got to the Island? Was it due to the consciousness-time-travel experiments Daniel did on himself, causing his breakdown?
What are the numbers? (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42)
How is Sun’s father connected with Charles Widmore?
Are Walt’s appearances on the island the same as those of Christian, Ben’s mom, and Yemi?
Stuff found in the Arrow station: glass eye, Bible with part of the Swan orientation film in it, radio. Why were these things left/placed there?
Why did Radzinsky edit the Swan orientation film?
What’s the significance of the silver bracelets worn by both Naomi and Elsa in the episode “The Economist”?
How many copies of the picture of Desmond and Penny are there, anyway?
Is Hurley really communicating with the dead?
Who is Matthew Abaddon?
Who is the Economist? Is it Ben playing one side against the other? or is it Charles Widmore? or is it some yet-unknown person/force who’s really the one who’s bringing the “war” to the island?
If John Locke’s body is still in the crate, who is the John Locke leading the group to the statue? Is the entity that is posing as John the same thing that took the form of Alex and told Ben he had to do everything John said? (The black smoke monster? The man in black?)
“The Constant” and “The Variable”—huh?
What/where is the “magic box”?
Will John’s statement, in the episode “Exposé,” of “things don’t stay buried on this island” come true?
Whose side was Juliet really on in the beginning?
Since Ben admitted he’d never talked to Jacob, did he really “cure” Juliet’s sister, or did he lie to Juliet about her sister’s cancer being back just to keep Juliet on the island?
Who painted “quarantine” on the inside of the hatch door?
Why did the Swan station continue functioning as a Dharma station after the purge?
Will Kelvin Inman return as an important character?
Who is the musician who programmed the code to turn off the blocking software in the Looking Glass station?
What is the significance of Charlie’s DS ring—other than Sun’s finding it in Season 5—especially given that Liam tells Charlie “it has to stay in the family”?
What exactly did Christian-in-Jacob’s-Cabin mean when he told John that Aaron was where he was supposed to be (with Sawyer and Miles instead of Claire in “Cabin Fever” in Season 4)?
Is there a significance to the pre-island run-ins with Nadia by several characters?
Why did Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lily stop using an upward inflection in the tone of their voices when asking questions (beginning in mid-Season 3 and continuing from then)?
Is there any significance to the multiple use of names: Daniel/Danielle; Tom (Mr. Friendly)/Thomas (Claire’s boyfriend)/Tom (Kate’s childhood friend)/Tom (Christian’s pseudonym); Michael/Mikhail; Charles (Widmore)/Charlie Pace/Charlie Hume (Desmond & Penny’s baby); Richard Alpert/Richard Malkin?
Will there (please, please, please!!!) be a happy ending for Sawyer and Juliet?
If the Oceanic 6 were only on the island for 100 days, how did Sun’s hair grow so fast?
Why do John and Sayid let Ben keep pushing their buttons? Why could neither of them see that Ben is a compulsive liar and never told them the truth about anything?
Why can Hurley see Jacob’s cabin? Who was the “eye in the window” when Hurley looked in and saw Christian sitting in the rocking chair?
Did Desmond make it back with Charlie’s “greatest hits” list and give it to Claire?
Why does Ethan look like he’s in his mid-40s in 2004 when he was born in 1977?
What did dead-Charlie mean when he told Hurley, “They need you”?
Was Daniel’s reaction to the news of finding Oceanic 815 on the bottom of the ocean the result of his consciousness being unstuck in time and having seen something of his future that he didn’t, at this point, quite understand?
Why was Jack so far inland just after 815 crashed, while everyone else from the mid-section of the plane landed on the beach?
Before the plane crashed, Charlie came out of the lavatory and slipped into a seat in first class—but all of the first-class seats ended up in the nose section of the plane (and everyone there was dead). How did Charlie end up with the mid-section survivors?
What was the favor Jacob asked Ilana to do for him? Get Sayid back to the island? Or something more important, like finding a replacement for Jacob once he was dead?
What is the significance of Jacob’s making physical contact with each of the Losties he went to visit in the Season 5 finale?
Why are pregnant women dying on the island in 2004 when they weren’t in 1977?
Is Ben Linus really Darth Vader?
Can Charles Widmore see the future, too? Did he know that Desmond would get stuck on the island and that’s why he tried to separate Desmond and Penny? Or did he know this through Daniel somehow?
Is John’s designation as the leader of the others simply a fluke or a time paradox—is it because in 1954 he tells Richard Jacob/Ben designated him their leader, but he was never really supposed to be the leader?
What’s the true origin of the compass? Or is it, like Locke’s leadership designation, simply the result/victim of a time paradox?
Why didn’t Jack go through any withdrawal symptoms after coming off of alcohol and drugs cold turkey at the beginning of Season 5?
If Daniel’s mum and dad are both British, how did he end up with an American accent (he did go to Oxford for college, after all)?
Is there a significance to the timing of rain, both on and off the island? It seems to rain whenever something bad is about to happen.
How did the polar bear get off the island and end up in Tunisia?
Who told the others to build the runway for Ajira 316?
How/why did Charlotte learn to speak Korean?
If just nicking the pocket of electromagnetism killed a man by “sucking” his filling out of his tooth and through the top of his head, why, when it was sucking in everything metallic at the end of Season 5 didn’t it do the same thing to Jack, Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, etc.?
Will Kate and Jack ever be likable again?
Why did Bram, who is on Ajira 316 with Ilana at the end of Season 5 and is one of the “shadow of the statue” people, grab Miles off the street and try to talk him out of working for Charles Widmore? (And what was with the “empty hole” inside of Miles to which he was referring?)
When Daniel returned from Ann Arbor and questioned Jack about how he got back to the island, and, when Jack told him Eloise said it was his “destiny,” what did Daniel mean when he said “she was wrong, you don’t belong here”?
Who is the “very clever fellow” who built the Lamp Post station in L.A. who originally found the island for the Dharma Initiative? (Daniel, in another timeline?)
Why did Charles Widmore send Daniel to the island when he knew Eloise would kill him there? Or did no one ever tell Charles what happened? Or did he think Daniel could change what happened once the island healed his mind and memory?
What happened to destroy all of the statue except for one foot?
What’s in the guitar case Jacob gave to Hurley to bring back to the island with him?
If you’re trying to get in extra comments toward the contest, scroll down to see an additional post I put up yesterday evening. I’ll also be posting two Fun Friday posts today. One comment on each of these posts will count toward the contest.
Tonight, the TV series Dollhouse comes to an end. Unlike another Joss Whedon sci-fi show, at least he knew this show was being canceled in time to bring the storyline to a conclusion (which he wasn’t able to do with the cult classic Firefly). I’ll be disappointed the show is off the air for one main reason—Tahmoh Penniket, the template for Bobby in the book I’m currently writing, plays one of the main characters in the series. Ahhh . . . that jawline. And, as pretty much everyone in the world knows (especially those who’ve been reading my blog the last couple of Fridays), LOST is also coming to an end this spring. What am I going to do without these two shows?
Having learned Dollhouse was ending forced Joss Whedon and his writers to amp up the conflict in the show to get into the climax of the overarching plot sooner than they would have if they’d been renewed for another six, thirteen, or twenty episodes. And the writing has been fantastic, with a major revelation coming a couple of weeks ago that had Twitter aflutter at the jaw-dropping reveal that changed everything we’d known about the series. I’m looking forward to many moments like that during the upcoming final season of LOST.
What’s a show you liked that was canceled far too soon?
There have been lots of series that have had their highest ratings on their final episode. What is your favorite series finale?
What’s a show that should have ended before it did?
Saw this on Dear Prudence (from Slate Magazine) today:
Dear Prudence,
My ex-girlfriend’s mom can’t stop writing on my Facebook wall: giving me advice, telling me she cares about me, and debating my politics. I am not in touch with my ex. What should I do?
—So Over ThisDear So Over,
Situations like yours are why “defriending” was invented. Don’t worry about hurting her feelings, just drop Mom.
—Prudie
Is this what the younger generation has really come down to? That he’d have to send a message (because you know he didn’t “write a letter”) to an advice columnist to find out what to do to keep someone from posting on his FaceBook page? Is his brain so atrophied that he couldn’t come up with the idea of unfriending this woman AS SOON AS HE BROKE UP WITH HER DAUGHTER?
Thoughts?
