#social qs
Help! My Wife Won’t Throw Out Her Wedding Ring!
Social Q’s, New York Times, 21 October 2021:
My wife and I are both on our second marriages. We’ve been married for 23 years. Recently, she showed me her wedding band from her first marriage. I asked her to get rid of it. She refused. She said it’s part of her history. This bothers me: The ring was given to her by another man with whom she exchanged vows and to whom she was married for six years. Your thoughts? — Honoring the Past?
Dear Honoring the Past,
That your wife of 23 years recently showed you a wedding band from a man she was married to decades ago is clear evidence that she is actively engaging in a sordid affair about which she is desperately trying to hide the evidence, and you are lucky to have discovered it now through your extreme cunning and wile, which is to say, because she showed it to you of her own volition because it is not a big deal whatsoever.
Worse, your putative “wife” is lording over you the shocking revelation that she existed on planet Earth before you came along — something you could never have known purely by virtue of the fact that you are her second husband. Who was she married to before this abrupt and traumatic reveal? Why, her imagined prince charming — you, of course! Obviously she has only and ever been married either to you or to the hope that she would find you, personally, somehow.
It is cruel indeed for your secretive wife to suddenly divulge out of nowhere and with no compunction whatsoever, that she, a formerly married woman who was completely open about her prior relationships, had in fact been formerly married to a real-life human man rather than preserving for you specifically her womanly gifts, as you had every right to believe up until the specific moment when, because you had never seen it before and thus it could not exist purely because she told you it had happened and we all know how women do be making these things up, her previous marriage. Your cruel wife has casually revealed to you the horrifying evidence of her desecration of the marriage vows which she had not made to you because you were not her husband, and this insult shall not stand!
This ring is only part of her “history” if your wife is allowed to believe that the sorry play of her life had worth and value and meaning before you made your entrance onstage. That’s no platform on which to build a relationship; the only way to know if your marriage is secure is to abandon her for her infidelity to you, a man she has been married to nearly three times longer than the man who gave her that ring all those decades ago. If she takes you back, you will only know it’s real if she throws away the ring over which she exchanged vows with a total stranger lo those 23 years ago.
Help! I’m Not Allowed To Use Racial Slurs!
Social Q’s, The New York Times,21 January 2021:
As a Christian, I find it hurtful when I hear the Lord’s name used as swear words. If I used sexist, racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic language as curse words, I might be garroted. So, it’s hard for me to understand why such swearing is acceptable when it comes to Christ. But the idea of confronting people about this makes me uneasy. Is there a better way to communicate my hurt? — DAINA
Dear Daina,
Perhaps we mere mortals are not meant to know why the all-powerful eternal being worshipped by you specifically is so incredibly pissy about the use of His name, being as He is all powerful and eternal and surely burdened with shit vastly more important than whether the kid behind the counter at Blockbuster mutters “Christ Almighty” under his breath when you pay for your rental in loose change. The Lord, as they say, moves in mysterious ways!
But to the crux (sorry!!!!!) of the matter: why are people allowed to do a cuss at Jesus, a cruel attack on a defenseless baby/the immortal Son of God and our Holy Redeemer and the Lamb of Vengeance who literally has the ability to damn humans to an eternity of unimaginable torment, but you can’t unleash a barrage of violent slurs on people whenever the mood strikes? How can it be that just anybody can string the words “god” and “damn” together, doing immeasurable harm to a helpless Supreme Creator who might, at any moment, begin unleashing a series of plagues upon the world to usher in Armageddon and put a final end to humanity as we know it like the good and loving sky-Parent He is, but you can’t verbally abuse people such that they fear for their safety and wellbeing?
I mean, where’s the justice in that? Nobody is allowed to use sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic curse words these days without suffering horrible consequences, such as being invited to direct Lethal Weapon Five,while everyone is allowed to say mean things about your particular religion of choice, for example, authors are having their books ripped from the shelves of public schools if they even vaguely hint at the idea that people other than white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian Americans exist. So your worldview definitely tracks with reality there!
Certainly what Jesus had in mind when He commanded us to love our neighbors was for good Christians such as yourself to release a battery of offensive slurs against our fellow community members in order to balance the scales of power, at last, in favor of the Almighty God The Creator of Heaven and Earth.
Help! How Do I Shake Down This Grieving Woman For $147?
Social Q’s, New York Times,21 January 2021:
Several months ago, our friend and neighbor flew across the country to be with her ailing mother. Unfortunately, her mother passed away during the visit. So, our neighbor telephoned and asked us to ship some clothes that would be appropriate for a funeral by overnight mail. (We’d exchanged house keys for emergency use.) She said she would reimburse us for the shipping cost. My wife selected the clothes, and I took them to UPS and paid $147 to ship them. But, apparently, the thought of reimbursing us hasn’t occurred to her since she returned home. Should I remind her, or write off her debt? — MIFFED
Dear MIFFED,
Some people really are just so far up their own asses with their own shit, aren’t they? Selfishly thinking of no one but themselves, with no thought for what other people may be going through!
Take yourself, for example! You’ve gone without 147 of your own dollars for months — yes, several! — just trying to power through one day at a time, looking for that $147, and finding again and again that it isn’t there. When you pick up the phone to call your $147, no one answers! Sometimes you see a funny internet post that you’d love to share with your $147, and the grief hits you, again, like a ton of bricks: $147 is not there to live, laugh, and love with you over another great Minions meme. Time comes for us all, but did it have to take $147 so soon, when $147 was in its prime? Just waiting to be spent on — well, the possibilities are endless: a new pair of loafers, some new Roomba brushes, or a really great sushi dinner for two. Gone too soon, $147. RIP.
Your neighbor, on the other hand, could have spared a single solitary care for your loss, had she wanted to do so amid the mild inconvenience of losing one’s parent during cross-country travel in the middle of a global pandemic. Instead, she carelessly got wrapped up in her own drama, as if the incidental nuisance of her mother’s death could possibly have taken precedence over ensuring your reimbursement as soon as humanly possible. And over something as piddly as some random black clothing! It’s not as though funerals are matters of life and death; anyone with the barest sense of human decency and an average level of competence could have Venmo’d your money back to you while they were booking a funeral home, picking out a means of pastoral conveyance for their mother’s remains into the afterlife, selecting flower arrangements, wrangling family members locally and afar, determining whether and how much catering would be necessary for a wake and post-funeral gathering, and confronting the mortal anguish of saying goodbye to a loved one for the very last time.
Do please remind your neighbor of that time her mother died; she’s likely forgotten the entire experience! Grief does strange things to people, and if she has any sense of proportion whatsoever, she’ll likely be completely mortified to receive your detailed invoice.
