What Would Janet Do? 2/08
Here is my advice column for the month of February. If you want to ask me a question, just go to my WWJD webpage. There’s a form there so you can submit a question to me.
Dear Janet:
I am a widow with five grown children and they never come and see me. When I talk to them on the phone, I ask them to come see me, but they say they are busy. When I do see them, they stay about an hour but can’t wait to get away it seems. I tell them I need them, that I worked hard my whole life for them, I cooked and cleaned for them, I took care of their father until he died (God rest his soul) and now I’m all alone and that is wrong. I offered my daughter five thousand dollars a month to come live with me and she said she had a job with the FBI and that it was important. I said the FBI is more important than your mother? She hung up on me. What is wrong with children taking care of their mother? I think they owe me at least that! Now all I have is the church and my dog. How do I get them to come see me and take care of me?
Abandoned Mother
Pacifica
Dear Abandoned Mother:
Your children didn’t abandon you. You pushed them out of your life. Your kids don’t care about you because you don’t care about them. You treat them like they are possessions, instead of people. I didn’t read anywhere in your letter where you were interested in your kids’ lives, their goals, their dreams. You aren’t proud your daughter works for the FBI, you wanted her to quit so she could come listen to you bitch about the other four kids. Nowhere in the letter did you talk about anything good about your kids. You only wrote about yourself.
Not only are you unrealistic about what your children owe you, you have invested no time putting yourself in their shoes. You have no idea how difficult it is to make it in the world these days. The pressure on working adults is insane. Houses in our area cost 800 grand for a fixer-upper, a million for decent lodgings. Your children are working sixty to seventy hours a week, have children to feed, baseball games to attend, dishes to do, bills to pay, repairs on the house, oil changes on the cars, people today have no spare time. And in your kids’ precious spare moments, they finally carve out some time for you and what do you do? You tell them they aren’t measuring up. They aren’t making you happy. All you do is complain. I don’t blame them for avoiding you, I would, too. Life is too short to spend in the company of people who treat you like crap. If I were you, I’d pray to God to give you compassion for your children. If you start respecting them, maybe they’ll come around more often.
Dear Janet:
My neighbor is driving me crazy. I’ve done some favors for her from time to time, but now she treats me like her personal slave. Every week she has some chore she wants me to do. She is in her eighties and can’t get around well, has plenty of money to hire someone to do her repairs, but all she does is complain when she has to hire someone. When I can’t do something or refuse or am busy, she clucks and pouts and then works on my wife, who then works on me. I worked hard my whole life to afford my retirement and I didn’t envision spending all my time helping some burdensome neighbor. How do I get her to leave me alone without causing a huge fuss?
Tired and Retired
Half Moon Bay
Dear Tired and Retired:
First of all, I commend you on your kindness. There aren’t enough people in the world like you. Secondly, I am firing you from your job of personal slave. You are free. You are no longer obligated to take care of anyone but you and your wife. And you are only allowed to help your wife directly, not her friends. Refuse to do anything for the neighbor again. Nothing. Ever. She doesn’t appreciate you. She expects someone to take care of her. Kind of like the woman in the previous letter. You aren’t helping her by helping her. All you’re doing is making yourself miserable and reinforcing the neighbor’s belief that she deserves people taking care of her for free. This woman doesn’t care about you. Once you stop, she’ll bitch for about a half a day and then move on to using someone else. Users are users. They don’t care who they use, they just want to use someone. And right now, that someone is you. You are retired. So retire. Stay strong. Fight for your time. And don’t feel guilty. You don’t owe that woman anything.
Dear Janet:
I know etiquette is not your forte, but I thought I’d ask you this question, anyway. When one is at a dinner party and the hostess starts playing footsie with you, what is the polite way to let her know that you’re not interested? I moved my foot away and she placed her hand on my knee. I moved my knee and she got angry and made some rather disparaging remarks, not directly at me, but it was clear to my wife and I that the comments were directed my way. By the way, the hostess was the spouse of my wife’s boss.
How could I have handled the situation differently?
Monogamous Male
Letter by email
You handled it perfectly. That was a no-win situation. At first, I was going to tell you to dump these “friends” but then you revealed that the Hostess Masher was Mrs. Boss. Sticky, sticky, sticky. But you handled it admirably. But I do think it’s time your wife found a new job.
