Disappointed in your daughter’s choice of mate-for-life? Wondering if that lunk on the den couch will ever get a job to support her in the style to which she’s accustomed? Ask Your Dingbat Son-in-Law Advisor, maybe she’ll think of something!
Dear Dingbat Son-in-Law Advisor:
Our daughter Belinda finally got married last fall to “Earl,” a 50s-throwback greaser type who works at an auto parts store. I am trying to warm up to him, but it’s not easy as he seems to have no ambition and eats like a horse. I am on a “fixed income” with my husband Duane who is a retired manufacturer’s rep and doesn’t have a gold-plated pension like our lay-about local, state and federal government employees and it is all I can do to feed two mouths, much less four.
Belinda said I might warm up to Earl if I gave him a project to do for me that was “up his alley,” so I said “all right, he has access to state-of-the-art car cleaning products at work, he can detail my car inside and out.” To my surprise, Earl “warmed to the task” and when he got back from Liberty Park, where he hangs out with his greaser friends on Saturday to wash their cars, my 2012 Equinox looked like it had just rolled out of the showroom at South Highway 50 Chevrolet-GMC-Kia.
Belinda had brought dinner, some chicken breasts she marinated, and Duane cooked them on the grill. When we sat down to dinner I started out being as nice as I could, saying “Earl, you did a great job, I don’t know how you got all the little donut crumbs out of the interior!” He says “It’s a one-simple-trick ‘hack’ I saw on the internet.” What’s that, I asked, and he says, “You use a raw chicken breast, it’s sticky and picks up everything.”
“Well, isn’t that something,” I said, “I never would have thought of that.” Then I notice Earl is giving me a funny look, and he says, “And when you’re done, the chicken is still good to eat.”
Ms. Dingbat Son-in-Law Advisor, I “gulped” when I realized what he had “pulled” on us–we were eating the chicken he’d used to clean my car! I made it through dinner but only by excusing myself to go to the bathroom where I upchucked everything, and was as green as the brussels sprouts when I looked at myself in the mirror.
I don’t know what I can do, Belinda says she loves Earl and because we live in a small town she would not have many prospects if she were to dump him, so I am seeking your advice.
Mrs. Claude Schuchter, Knob Noster, MO
Dear Mrs. Schuchter–
I understand your frustration, but “no worries” as the kids like to say these days. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that most automobile-borne bacteria are killed by the high heat of open-flame barbecue, and whatever toxins remain actually help our digestion! You can “re-purpose” Belinda’s marinade as anti-freeze, helping you s-t-r-e-t-c-h your retiree dollars to the breaking point.
Dear Ms. Dingbat Son-in-Law Advisor:
Last year I gave in to the pleas of my daughter Eunice and loaned her shiftless husband Chuck $1,500 to start raising chinchillas for fun and profit. I have no head for business, and with my late husband no longer around to advise me, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the contract I signed which I am now told by a lawyer at our church is “ironclad” and obligates me to buy a chinchilla a week for two years.
Eunice and Check can’t afford a house, they live in an apartment, so I agreed that they could raise their chinchillas in my garage–they don’t have one, they have to park on the street. As you can imagine, a chinchilla a week is 52 in a year, they apparently do not get the week of Christmas off, and the smell of those critters has become overpowering.
Then I come to find out that the promise of making millions off of chinchillas is a scam but apparently our state attorney general is too busy running for governor to stop it so now helpless victims like me see our life savings being eaten up by the high cost of chinchilla chow. Is there any way to break this “cycle of poverty” I am sinking into with these animals, which may be cute but I was not told by my dingbat son-in-law that they are actually “crepuscular rodents.”
Phyllis Orthwein, Traverse City, Michigan 49686
Dear Phyllis–
Oh my–you are in a pickle! I would suggest you “cut your losses” and stop writing checks right now to what sounds like a high-pressure/high-volume “chinchilla mill” of the sort that prey on young people across the country, and in your case a dingbat son-in-law whose mental age may not have kept up with his birthdays.
I checked the website of Attorney Darrell Eisenburg, who helps people get out of long-term chinchilla investment scams, and here is the answer listed in his “Frequently asked questions” pull-down menu: “If you raise chinchillas in your garage, close the door and leave the car running for 5 or 10 minutes. Then for $150 not including photocopies and postage I will write a ‘lawyer’s letter’ to the company and tell them you want your money back because they sold you chinchillas who were suicidal.”
Dear Dingbat Son-in-Law Advisor:
My daughter Tina met her husband “Trey” in college, where he seemed to be a “go-getter” and ambitious, telling her he was going to get an M.B.A. and a high-paying job. Well, he lasted exactly one week in business school, said it was too competitive and threw it all away to get an M.F.A., which I understand is a very different type of degree, you can’t get a job with it and even if you do there’s no money in it.
Meanwhile, my daughter is pushing 40 and 40 isn’t pushing back. She would like to quit her job as an actuary at Modern Moosehead Life Insurance Company and raise a family, but my dingbat son-in-law says he still needs to write his required graduation “project” which is a 26-poem cycle about loss and despair and other depressing stuff.
Ms. Dingbat Son-in-Law Advisor, I am at my wit’s end as “Trey” just sits around all day running up credit card charges to watch movies on our television. Do you have any suggestions about how I can “light a fire” under his nether regions and get him out of the house?
Mrs. Clint Morchinson, Ottumwa, Iowa
Dear Mrs. Morchinson–
Here are a few “tried-and-true” methods of getting a resident son-in-law to seek gainful employment: (1) vacuum a lot, (2) frequent tests of smoke detector alarms, (3) highlight want ads with yellow felt-tip markers, and write “Just a thought!” in the margin.
Or you could write some poetry of your own, with upbeat themes and lots of kittens, and read them to him for his “expert opinion.”