Dear Tiffany,

Image by Monika from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or..." 

                                                                                        -Barack Obama

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders (and Tiffany),

Hoo-Boy... I've done it again. 

I apologize, Tiffy, may I call you Tiffy? You see, I saved a quote attributed to you and I don't know where I got the quote from. In my defense, I'm almost old. I'll be turning 40 next summer and my short-term memory, as well as my organizational skills, ain't what they used to be. 

I think that it may have been in the Wall Street Journal. Their opinion page occasionally includes an item called Notable & Quotable that features a quote from someone who's not necessarily important or well-known. Regardless of where I found the quote I'm certain that you are the quotee. 

{There's no such word as quotee, and don't you mean opinion pages, plural?}

Are you sure? And for the record, the online version of the WSJ posts all three pages of op-eds that are published in the dead trees version as one long scrollable page, Dana. Anyway, I find Tiffy's quote to be interesting and worth sharing.  

Tiffany shares Mrs. Clinton's and Barack Obama's opinion of the Deplorables. Being semi-deplorable myself, naturally, her quote caught my eye.  

"I understand why they might be grumpy. After all, in all sorts of ways, especially economically, they’ve lost/are losing ground. What I don’t understand is why they don’t learn to code, or pitch ideas for reality TV shows, or something instead of whining about it all the time."

Obviously, Tiffy is not devoid of empathy, but clearly she's no pushover.

You know what? I'll wager that If she courageously decides to reproduce in spite of the many problems and downsides of doing so in a postmodern world — finding a genetically and financially suitable mate, the environmental impact of creating yet another carbon dioxide emitting H. Sapien, finding woke daycare, stretch marks, etc. — she'll be a tiger mom (tiger birthing person?) regardless of which ethnicity she self-identifies with.

{You're just recruiting um... fresh participators? The Ponzi scheme that finances your Social Security checks requires a steady stream of same.}

Is participator a real word? Anyhow, don't get her started:

"And don’t get me started on the Bitter Clingers! They may think that their “religion” gives them the right to not have anything to do with abortion, or baking cakes for LGBTQ etc., but what if it was still legal in some states to refuse to serve white, brown, etc sorts of people?"

Abort that baby, bake that cake, and shut up! A woman of principle. I must admit I'm confused though. Refusing to serve a person of pallor is the sort of discrimination actively encouraged by many of the awokend as atonement for sins real or imagined.

If the Supremes were to just wake up and start interpreting dust-covered legislation, and the moldy old Constitution for that matter, in a much more flexible way Tiffy's frustrations could easily be resolved.  

"It’s our duty to drag these folks into the 21st century for their own good!"

The last line of the quote is my favorite. It reminds me of the idealism many of my fellow Boomers and I professed a long time ago in a zeitgeist, far, far away — at least for a minute or two before most of us were mugged by reality and had to get a real J.O.B.

Unfortunately, it also reminds me of the late, not-so-great Mao Tse-Tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and/or any given inquisition conducted by the Catholic church over the course of several centuries. But in her defense, given the current state of the American education system, Tiffy may never have heard of either.

Fortunately, this being the 21st century — and not the late middle ages and early renaissance when the inquisition was really rockin', or the swingin' sixties when Chairman Mao was Chinese communisms comeback kid — we don't torture and/or execute heretics anymore, at least in America.

We just dox 'em, cancel 'em, and destroy their livelihoods and reputations. We've come a long way, baby. And if they profusely profess the error of their ways (and hire the right public relations specialists) redemption is theoretically possible.

{Hey-hey-hey, wait a second. You're turning 70 next summer, not 40, what do you think you're...}

Well, gotta go, Tiffy. If I don't get out the door soon I'm gonna be late for this week's Ironman Triathlon. Please feel free to contact me if you should happen to read this.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Dinner With the Family

Image by wixin lubhon from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"Tell the truth, work hard, and come to dinner on time." -Gerald R. Ford

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I'm so old that when I was a kid eating dinner supper with the whole fan damily was literally a rule, and I don't recall being aware of any family that didn't follow the rule. 

{Fan damily?} 

A lame old joke that still pleases me, Dana. I enjoy spoonerisms as much as I do bad puns and alliteration.

{Lame and old would seem to...}  

This rule was not the result of the fact that, as Stanford University now informs us, "Numerous studies show that eating together not only is an important aspect of family life..." that "when a family sits down together, it helps them handle the stresses of daily life and the hassles of day-to-day existence."

Paging Norman Rockwell. 

{Who?}

The reason my family ate together every day — which we called supper because "Democrats eat supper at 5:00, Republicans eat dinner at 9:00" according to my parents — was for both traditional and practical reasons and just the way things were. 

{Wait-wait-wait. Dinner vs. supper? I don't get it.}

You're overthinking it, it was just one of the ways Ed and Reda Mehlmauer expressed their firm belief that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the working man gets it in the neck. 

{Don't you mean working person?} 

Nope. They were both too busy trying to keep their seven kids fed, clothed, and sheltered to worry about sexism, and not even aware of their white privilege. Alas, both died relatively young. He was 56, she was 64, and they both died prior to the Great Awokening.

It was traditional, I can remember hanging out in front of a local corner store, the proprietors of which lived upstairs, waiting for their family to finish supper and reopen the store. 

By the way, like most stores at the time, it wasn't open all night and was closed on Sundays. I'm not personally aware of anyone starving to death because of these primitive customs but I am aware of individuals who were the victims of intense nicotine fits. 

It was practical, for multiple reasons. Most mums were stay-at-home mums and making supper was part of the job description. Larger families and less prosperity on average made eating out relatively rare in working-class circles. "Fast food" was around but not ubiquitous like it is today. 

Obviously, pizza and Chinese food were two all-American exceptions. You may have visited Colonial Williamsburg, eaten pizza made in brick ovens, and taken a ride in an authentic, horse-drawn pizza delivery wagon.

Unfortunately, being a working-class family of nine, real pizza was rare. But Chef Boyardee's pizza in a box came along in 1955. Some maintained it tasted more like the box than it did actual pizza but the price was right.  

Chinese food dates to when the California Gold Rush got cooking. A beautifully restored Chinese laundry and a Chinese restaurant next door that were in continuous operation since 1848 — that are now owned by the San Francisco Historical Society — are currently closed due to pending multi-party litigation. 

But I drift. 

Thinking back, I seem to remember that my sibs and I stayed fairly busy pursuing a wide variety of interests and activities in spite of the fact that supper was at five — be there or go hungry.

Free-range child rearing was also a tradition, but any adult-organized/supervised after-school stuff was run by people who also had to get home for supper. Evening activities — street fairs, dances, boy or girl scout meetings, loafing on a comfortable stoop, etc. — had to wait till supper was over.

{What the hell is a stoop?}

But that was then. We stayed busy but the pace of life was slower and we didn't have nearly as many options and choices. Nowadays, mum's stuck at work, and who wants to hang out and gossip and flirt on the stoop on warm summer evenings now that air conditioners aren't only for rich people and we have social media?

{What the hell is a stoop?}

I'll bet that after I'm deleted the Stickies will reminisce about how Poppa liked to eat his dinner in his man cave while streaming a carefully chosen movie or TV show on his large computer monitor because he used his phone (which was often turned off) primarily for phone calls and that he regarded the concept of a smart TV as a contradiction in terms.  

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Quiet Quitting

As opposed to noisy quitting?

Image by Alexa from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man." -Benjamin Franklin

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I get it, I do. I quietly quit more than one of the jobs I had prior to retirement, but "quiet quitting" sounds appalling to people with good work ethics. 

{Just how many jobs did you have?}

In my defense, Dana, I had a good work ethic. I never quietly quit before coming to the conclusion that trying to be a conscientious employee at a given job was pointless. Even when I was in my hippie with a job stage (long story) I tried to be as good an employee as was practicable. 

Comic Interlude:

Me: "Hey, _______, I hear ya got a new job."

Unnamed acquaintance: "Yup, minimum wage and all you can steal." 

While I didn't/don't approve of that attitude it's still a great line. 

I never quietly quit just because of the nature of the work itself. As has been said, that's why they call it work. If it's that awful, you need to actually quit and find another job. Note to Stickies: I highly recommend securing the next job before quitting the current one.  

I did quietly quit once or twice while looking for another job once I realized there was just no way to make the situation work. Also, I occasionally took on a job out of sheer necessity, when times were tough, knowing that I'd be outta there ASAP so you could argue that I quietly quit the day I was hired. 

But I never ghosted anyone. I gave as much notice as I could. I apologized.

{What about the time you worked as a busboy for nine days for that psycho that ran the dining room of a Holiday Inn like a female version of Joseph Stalin?}

I ghosted her out of fear for my life. I hope she's long gone or doesn't read this. Shudder...

Sometimes the boss is so incompetent that it's not even possible to manipulate him/her/them into doing their job. You may need to quit quietly while looking for another job and struggling to keep your current boss from screwing even that up.

Some advice for Millies, I'm a Boomer, a population cohort often under attack by succeeding generations. I'm told that many unemployed/underemployed Millies are counting on inheriting some of the wealth my generation has stashed away. Sadly, this isn't something I need to concern myself with. 

Careful, If you plan on killing someone you need to be that much more careful if you stand to inherit anything. The more dough involved, the closer the Homicide Division is likely to look. A given Millennial should be patient and let nature take its course... perhaps with a judiciously applied nudge. 

I'm willing to wager that the parents of most Boomers didn't tell their offspring to find and follow their passion, mine didn't. I think that an often somewhat less-than-ideal childhood, the Great Depression, and a worldwide hot war followed by a worldwide cold one tended to dissolve the stars in their eyes.

I don't think they imagined a future that included an ever-expanding welfare state financed by an ever-expanding national debt, or the decline of a moral consensus that included a work ethic based on paying your own way to maintain your pride and dignity — and three hots and a cot.

I learned the hard way that most people are unlikely to be able to pursue their passion at work. But if you work hard you can build the best life possible under your circumstances, and with a little luck, you'll have a few bucks left over to pursue your passion on your own time.     

The current "quiet quitting" kerfuffle is a new wrinkle for which the wrinkling Boomers are partially responsible. Notions like follow your passion, you can have it all, etceterall, began with the Boomers. We meant well, but it turns out that most people won't make the big bucks, or even adequate bucks, by following their passion.

Trying to compete at work with those who seem to thrive on "hustle culture" sucks as much nowadays as much as it did back in the day but the answer isn't quiet quitting, embracing mediocrity, and hoping for the best. 

Most people can't/won't have it all and chasing that notion is too much like work. But you can figure out what you really want (which will change as you live your life), what you really need to do to survive, and chase your dream — while taking care of business and making the world a better place just by doing your j.o.b., and doing it well,

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access my golden(?) oldies. You too can be a patron of the arts! Click here.    

Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!