Don’t fold fun game due to spoil-sport’s threat

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2020 (2213 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My retired girlfriends and I, whose kids have grown up, have a weekly gambling club (“The GC” it’s called) because we are free to do what we want in the afternoons — for the first time in our adult lives.

We have formed a protective (COVID-careful) bubble. We have champagne glasses with our names on them and meet in anybody’s backyard with a pool — and we play poker and talk and laugh.

And we gamble for money. Before you start tut-tutting, we have a low $20 limit nobody is allowed to go over. Once your money is gone, you’re either serving the rest of us drinks or hanging out in the swimming pool. It’s a great time.

The problem? One friend’s husband heard we were gambling and forbade her to come anymore. He told another GC friend’s husband, but she told her guy where to get off. He’s an alcoholic and she supports him financially. So, we have one friend out, and frankly, we’re waiting for her big-mouth, pushy husband to tell other husbands — and for a few women it may be a problem. What do you suggest?

— GC Group Prez, Winnipeg

Dear GC Prez: The women for whom it will not be a problem should let it drop to their guys, and tell them they do a little betting at these card parties, but the most they spend is $20. Once spent, they go swimming or wait on the others. This will not seem like a big deal to most men, who would probably bet way more on poker night.

If that one angry husband carries through with his threat and phones the other men to report their wives are gambling, likely they will tell him to just get over it. It’s $20 for a fun get-together with the girls, not an expensive, problematic activity. Stop worrying! Just warn the husbands this fellow might be calling to snitch so they can have a smart reply ready.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I’m married to a man who has twice the energy and physical fitness of his computer-addicted grandsons who are in their early 20s. The guys are in university and their summer jobs fell through because of COVID-19, and their parents are in the medical world and working overtime.

Yet, because of our youth-worshipping society, “Gramps” is starting to get comments from them about old age. It makes me so mad! The other day I caught them laughingly calling him “that old man” behind his back.

My husband is a runner and he can out-run, out-swim and out-sail these overgrown boys. They should be at the height of their physical prowess but are pudgy boy-men who are way out of shape. I’m a year-round runner myself, and I know those boys can swim well. Yet, they don’t.

Their grandpa has nothing on his body to show his age but laugh lines from the corner of his eyes. What should I say to his smirking young grandsons who sit on their rear ends at the computer all day and night and can barely do anything but grow a beard?

— Shocked At Them, Fort Richmond

Dear Shocked: The idea is not to give these young men a dressing down but to entice them away from their computer addictions if you can. Fun should be the inducement (not shame) although it’s understandable you are annoyed and want to kick their butts for putting down your husband.

Not all people are crazy about sports. Maybe there’s something else entirely these young guys might be interested in, if you took some time to talk about different activities. If they do show some interest in summer sports, consider this idea: Your husband could take them with him to the lake and offer to pay for getting them introduced to wind-and-water sports which are popular with guys their age, and may even bring some status and bragging rights!

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I met a wonderful complicated man a few years ago who kept telling me we “came from different worlds.” As we got to know each other, it seems we had a surprisingly large amount of things in common.

If we had brushed each other off as “too different” in those first few months, we wouldn’t have found out that a big part of the attraction was the many underlying things we had in common, after we got past the surface differences.

I wonder how many people miss out on loving each other by insisting they had to be much the same from the outset in terms of money, work, age, family background and race. What do you think?

— From Discord to Harmony, Southern Manitoba

Dear Harmony: Sometimes people who annoy each other with their differences in the beginning just need to keep digging deeper into the layers of humanness we all share. What seemed to be prickly, slowly smooths out, and seems kind of funny, in retrospect.

Once in awhile, the initial sparking, spatting and disagreeing is just the protective human spirit sensing this could be a close relationship — and being scared stiff to go there again after suffering breakups with other people.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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