Tag: Ask Roger Anything

You want dating advice from me?!

Ended up in a relationships with women I met at a party, at college, and at church, but dating, as I think of it, not so much.

The_Dating_GameNew York Erratic, who was probably snowbound when she wrote this, asked:

Another question (another life question): what’s different about dating when you’re older than dating when you’re a teenager?

You’re asking ME? I have no idea.

Let’s review my “dating” history:

High school: Hung out with a group of folks, and somehow, I’m going out with one of them. We break up, but another young woman in the group pursues me, and we’re soon a couple. She breaks up with me, but I was too tired/depressed to pursue anyone else.

College: The second day, I met the Okie, who I would marry less than a year later. We went on one date, to see Rosemary’s Baby, and we were a couple. After we split, I realized that I had lost any ability to recognize when a woman might be interested, though sometimes it’d hit me AFTER the fact. I spent the better part of three years in a monastic lifestyle, especially 1977. As they used to write, from a romance perspective: Worst. Year. Ever.

Schenectady 1978: I started gaining confidence as I’d go out, albeit briefly, with a couple of people. Met a woman at a party in August, and we went out on one date and ended up a couple off and on for five years.

I probably did go out on a few dates after I was 30, but I was never particularly comfortable asking women out. I remember there was this particular woman my late friend Nancy Sharlet really wanted me to go out with. I dutifully called more than once, but it just never happened.

Ended up in relationships with women I met at a party, at college, and at church, but dating, as I think of it, not so much. We’d hang out a lot, as friends, and it evolved.

I am SO happy not to have to think about dating, now that I’m married for nearly 15 years. Now The Wife and I DO go out on dates, but the success or failure of the relationship is not tied to them.

But that’s not what you asked. How has it changed? Online stuff. Creating online dating profiles. And they may already know more about you than you want them to know. You have a hard time hiding stuff. Where is the mystery?

I was watching this show Parenthood (NBC, Thursday nights) last month. In one episode, one character (over 40) has her sister-in-law Google her date, or rather her plus-one, because it’s really not a date. Another character, a young man, a freshman in college, is really into having a relationship but is caught up with this young woman who just likes to “hook up,” as they say, at least until his high school sweetheart shows up.

So it’s the times that are a-changin’. Not sure it’s a function of age, but rather evolving values and technology.

Not in an upstate New York State of mind

I REALLY liked Madison, Wisconsin when I was there in 1988. Always appreciate the state’s progressive tradition.

LONG-time blogger Dustbury asks a question for this round of Ask Roger Anything:

If a purely arbitrary decision was handed down to the effect that you could no longer remain in upstate New York, where would you first consider going?


I’ve thought on this a lot, actually. It’s pretty much a process of elimination.

Not moving to anywhere there is no fresh water, so desert states such as Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico are definitely out. California – well, is the big earthquake still coming?

I’d like to be out of direct range of hurricanes, which eliminates Florida, not that I wouldn’t have passed on it for other reasons; and the parts of the states on the Gulf coast and southern part of the Atlantic are unlikely.

Not Texas, because Texas is Texas.

I’m wary of being in tornado alley, which seems to encompass much of the center of the country from Oklahoma to Ohio.

Places I had considered before I’m now rethinking; I worry about Washington and Oregon after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown in Japan, maybe not enough to eliminate them, but it’s a factor. I wouldn’t pass on all the states along with the flood-prone Mississippi River, but any place that’s flooded in the last 15 years, I can imagine flooding again.

I hear the Deep South is more enlightened than it used to be; not sure I’d want to move there.

I REALLY liked Madison, Wisconsin when I was there in 1988. Always appreciate the state’s progressive tradition. Don’t love the current governor, though.

Do I want somewhere warmer? Certainly NOT colder, which eliminates Minnesota and Maine.

Ultimately, it would be either in a small college town or a larger college town with decent mass transit in New England, but probably not Connecticut, which often feels like suburbia. Rhode Island is a possibility. I’m fond of Northampton, Massachusetts.

My pick, all things being equal, is southern Vermont. After all, Vermont was part of New York, before it was broken off to become the 14th state. Both New York and Vermont have a maple syrup tradition. And, in spite of damage from some recent hurricanes, both tend to be out of hurricane alley.

Houses and dogs and books…

In all likelihood, you will pour every dime into the purchase, so that inevitable first repair of something you did not expect, you probably can’t afford.

Let me answer the rest of the questions from New York Erratic:

What would you say is the most difficult part of buying your first house? Is there something that you wish people would have told you?

I didn’t own my first house until I was 46 when I moved into the house my bride had purchased seven years earlier.

“Everyone” said that you’re “supposed” to own a house. I was never that interested in doing so.

My parents didn’t own a home until I went away to college. So I had no models in this area. While having to move every few years could be a pain, it was less of an encumbrance than a house.

In 2000, we bought our current home AND we were landlords; I HATED that. It was enough to take care of the living abode, but going over to mow the lawn and shovel the snow off the roof – it had a flat roof – was a royal pain. We sold it in 2004, shortly after The Daughter was born.

So to the question:
1) You DON’T have to buy a house.
2) If you do, it would be helpful to be handy with tools, which I am decidedly not.
3) In all likelihood, you will pour every dime into the purchase, so that inevitable first repair of something you did not expect, you probably can’t afford.
4) This will almost inevitably lead to buyers’ remorse. “How did I not notice that the dryer has a capacity of four shirts?” (This is true in our case, BTW.)
5) If you DO buy a house, you may spend lots of money on stuff that nobody can see. I was visiting my cousin Anne at Thanksgiving, and she told of the thousands of dollars spent to avoid flooding in the basement, expenditures no visitor or future purchaser will ever see. Some of our similar improvements involved spending thousands of dollars having a hole dug in the front yard to dislodge a tree root from the plumbing, lest we have sewage in the basement.

A LOT of investment in a house is all but invisible, and that can be REALLY discouraging. If I had it to do over again, I doubt I’d buy a house at all.

The single advantage is that people seem to think you are a “grownup” when you own a home.

Have you ever owned a dog?

Yeah, I was around 10, maybe (give or take two years). We had an Alaskan husky called Lucky Stubbs; I have no idea who named him, but it wasn’t I.

Anyway, he would nip me. I would say BITE but it didn’t draw blood or anything, so nip. But then he nipped one of the daughters of our minister. THEN my father gave him to a farmer where he’d have more room to roam than our tiny city back yard.

PS: after that, I was rather wary of dogs for years.

What’s your favorite spice?

Scary Spice.

OK, I jest. Cinnamon.

Old used books or brand new never read books?

Usually new, unless they are vintage. Books are like cars in that when they’re about 20 years old, they’re just old, but at some point they become VINTAGE. I have a hymnal from 1849, and another book from that period called Verdant Green, and THOSE are, as the kids used, are COOL.

It’s another solstice Ask Roger Anything

I remember last time, someone asked if a particular query was too personal. Too personal? Bah, humbug!

What are you going to give me for Christmas? Santa is bringing me the new Hess truck, aren’t you, Nick? A few pieces of music, a couple books, and some clothes are on my list. (It pleases The Wife no end that clothes are now on the roster, which was NOT the case a decade ago.)

I know. YOU can Ask Roger Anything. That would fill my stocking with holiday cheer. Then, in an act of reciprocal joy, I will actually ANSWER said questions, more or less honestly.

I remember last time, someone asked if a particular query was too personal. Too personal? Bah, humbug! I mean I’m sure there are questions out there that would qualify, but that one wasn’t even close!

I promise to respond within the next 30 days, as I have always done in the past. Now if y’all inundate me with SO many questions that I can’t respond in a month, 1) I’ll be very happy and 2) I’ll let you know. It’s not happened before, which, of course, is no foreteller of future responses.
***
And while you’re at it, why not Ask Arthur anything as well? Maybe why kiwi describes New Zealanders, fruit AND flightless birds.

Avoiding conflict

I was always a GOOD kid. I had anger, but it was quite suppressed growing up.

Dan Van Riper, the Albany Weblog guy, first wrote to Ask Roger Anything:
Roger, I… I’m sorry, I can’t think of anything to ask. I really want to but… I can’t. Why not?

Because my life’s an open book? Because you’re having dental work done?

But then he came back and asked:
Wait, I just thought of a question. It’s actually been in the back of my head for some time. You’ve said more than once that you don’t like conflict between people, that when it happens you tend to shy away from it. I know several people who are like that. My question is, why? Do you have any idea where that comes from? Or is that too personal?

To answer the last, easiest, question, no, it’s not too personal.

I suppose I need to define the terms. My daughter’s favorite Beatles song is “We Can Work It Out,” which features the line: “Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.”

Watching the Sunday morning news shows, or Bill O’Reilly, or the like, I realize I would not do very well. People are rapidly throwing around facts and pseudo-facts, often yelling over each other. It would create in me too much agita to think clearly. Later, I’d have some treppenwitz moments, thinking of what I SHOULD have said.

I’ll state my positions – say on this blog – and I’m sure there are people who like them, and people who don’t, and that’s fine. People – you or others – will have a reasonable response. Maybe we’ll change each other’s minds or maybe we won’t, but it’s OK because it seems to be done with a level of mutual respect.

Whereas on the Times Union blogs, or national newspaper websites, the conflict tends to escalate, with one side trying to out-shout the other. No one will be convinced of the position of the other, so what’s the point, really? I’ve posted some things on the TU site, where I made my initial observation, then others blithely go off in directions I hadn’t intended. I let them, but after a while, I get bored with it all. It seems futile.

Then there’s the uncertainty thing, the sign of a good humanities student. I certainly don’t pretend that I know all the answers – others may think so, but it’s not true – and I put forth the possibility, in SOME topics, that I could be at least partially mistaken. I don’t have the need to badger others about those things.

I’m an old political science major, but political arguing I find demoralizing. Often, “victory” is seen as stopping government, or a corporate entity under its jurisdiction, from doing what it ought not to have been doing in the first place.

None of this, though, is the REAL answer. The REAL answer is how I was raised. My mother was great with the aphorisms such as “You get more bees with honey than vinegar.” My father’s message is that the angry young black man thing doesn’t work well in a primarily white society.

I was always a GOOD kid. I had anger, but it was quite suppressed growing up. I expelled a LOT of it in my twenties, no small portion of it at my rather controlling father. And once I let it go, a lot of it was just gone. I just don’t get as angry as I used to; sad, frustrated, even occasionally in despair about the world The Daughter is going to inherit – pollution, global warming creating ecological catastrophes, economic and cultural inequality, to name a few. But anger just doesn’t work for me, most of the time.

In fact, anger makes me feel out of control. It’s been known to give me a raging headache. I’ve been told I look like a crazy person (crazier person?).

Interestingly, then, it means that the rate times I REALLY get angry, it’s usually more effective. If I’m a known hothead, then its effectiveness is compromised.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial