About twice a week, software on the site sends email notifications about recent posts, to anyone who’s signed up (click ‘subscribe’ at the top of the page, if you’d like). When people un-subscribe, the software sends me an email, though I don’t know why — it doesn’t even tell me who unsubscribed. It only says, “A reader has unsubscribed.”
I mention this because *three* unsubscribe notifications arrived in short order after publishing “Am I the asshole?” on September 26. So I guess the answer was yes. There are only about 20 people signed up for notifications, so three cancelled subscriptions is a lot, but I couldn’t be happier about it! Buh-bye, buh-bye, buh-bye!
See, the whole point of being (almost) entirely honest here — the reason this website exists — is to find a few friends or faux friends who know me and accept me as I actually am. No facades. This site is me. I write it for myself, and for anyone who enjoys reading it. Shaking off people who can’t handle that is a good thing.
♦ ♦ ♦ As I get older and crankier, I’m less and less willing to compromise. I’m frickin’ sick of compromise.
All my life, my life took second place behind a job. Now that I’m retired I want to do what I want to do, not what someone else wants me to do.
Here, let me tell you a story:My mom lives with my sister Katrina, and Katrina will be out of town for a few days next week, so I volunteered to take a bus ride over, bring sandwiches and a two-liter soda, and have lunch with Mom at her house one day.She texted me, Oh, why don’t we go out to lunch instead?I replied, Love to, but I don’t have a car, and you won’t take the bus.Silence for ten minutes, and then she texted me again, and said she’d invited my brother Dick and his wife Young-sook to join us. Problem solved, she said. Dick will drive us all to a restaurant.Which changed everything, but not in a good way. Dick will want to eat at a chain place, where he’ll treat the waitress rudely, and talk about how great Trump is. Young-sook barely speaks English, so I never know what to say, except, Please don’t put your hands in my food.I love Dick, and I’ve even gotten used to Young-sook, but without asking, Mom had changed my offer of a fairly easy 3-bus cross-town ride and lunch, into a less enjoyable and undoubtedly much longer afternoon.To Mom I texted, I’d really rather bring you a nice deli sandwich. Just you and me. If you want to get out of the house, we could walk to the park a block away.Mom replied, Oh, I’d so much rather have Dick and Young-sook along, and go to Applebee’s.Which is the point where I’m supposed to be a good kid, even in my mid-60s, and compromise. Or more accurately, give in.But my answer was, Well, have a real nice lunch with Dick and Young-sook at Applebee’s.♦ ♦ ♦ My other brother Clay has invited me to visit at his house next weekend, and watch a baseball playoff game. He lives in the next county, 40 miles from me and 15 miles from the nearest bus stop, so I’ll need a lift. Which means I must compromise on what time I get there, how long I stay, and when I leave.I especially hate compromising on when I leave. By nature I’m an introvert, and when I’ve run low on sociability, I want to be gone. But instead I gotta ask my lift, “Can we go now?” and hope my lift doesn’t say, “Oh, let’s play one more quick game of Parcheesi.”When we finally drive away, I have to converse in the car for the entire ride, which was difficult on the way over, and it’s more difficult on the way back, after several hours of conversing with everyone at Clay’s house. It’s my nature: There’s a low limit to how long I can talk with people, even family.
Factor in also, that I’m car-phobic and viscerally hate even getting into any automobile that’s not a bus.On the plus side, of course, I love Clay, and his wife speaks English and hardly ever puts her hands in my food. And baseball is the only sport I have any slight interest in.But watching baseball on TV is like being insulted for three hours. There are ads between innings, sure, but you can mute the telly. There are also, though, ads during the game itself — the score isn’t the score, it’s the [Name of Bank] score, and this stolen base replay is brought to you by Re/Max, and special effects will insert a fast-food logo onto the pitcher’s mound, with another company’s branding projected behind the batter. Most of the game is advertising, and I frickin’ hate advertising, more than I care about who wins any game.So when Clay invites me to his house to watch a ball game, almost always my answer is no. He’s my bro, though, so twice a year I say yes. Next year I’m cutting back to once.♦ ♦ ♦ My wife is dead, as are most of my closest friends. Of my two living long-time buddies, one’s gone all QAnon, and the other is so apolitical we can’t talk about much more than baseball and old times.So a few weeks ago, I published a personal ad at Craigslist, not looking for romance. All I’d like is someone to join me for breakfast or a burger once in a while, or a game of chess, or some light conversation.Craigslist being what it is, the listing earned a dozen emailed come-ons from horny men — “Send a picture, maybe without pants,” etc — but it also brought three email exchanges with people who didn’t seem sketchy or skanky.One of those three replies vanished after I mentioned my politics and atheism. The other two, I stopped responding when one mentioned being an usher and elder at his church, and the other said what a boondoggle public transit is, after I’d mentioned taking the bus.In a word: NO. I’d like someone to talk with, but I’m not so desperate I’ll settle for someone I won’t like.So I’m alone 365 days a year, but I don’t wonder why, and I’m not complaining. I prefer being alone, over spending time with people who annoy me, and let’s be frank: Most people annoy me.If that’s something you can’t understand, no problem. There’s an ‘unsubscribe’ button in every email the site’s software sends.10/4/2024 itsdougholland.com
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