Help how you can; don’t fret about fun-lovers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/01/2021 (2103 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts:  I just finished reading an article on the homeless and how they thanked God when they found a garbage can with food they could eat. With a lump in my throat, I then read Party Boy’s whining in your column about not being able to have his annual New Year’s Eve party.

He sounded like a teenager — he “could just cry” thinking of what he’ll have missed. I scraped the bottom of my sympathy barrel, but I couldn’t come up with anything for him.

My mum taught me that when I was feeling down, I should do something nice for someone. He and his buddies could have planned a Zoom session during the day and made 20 bag lunches each. (Bologna or salami sandwiches, doughnuts — very simple; maybe throw in some socks, gloves and scarves!) Several of them could have gone out, masked, on the streets on New Year’s Eve and delivered the bags. The police or Siloam Mission would have told them places to go! — Disgusted, Selkirk

Dear Disgusted: This guy and his pals had no desire to do philanthropic things on New Year’s Eve, which used to be a big party night. Your disgust is understandable. But the writer and his party pals don’t strike me as the types to devote themselves to a Zoom party or to deliver help to the homeless.

Sometimes you just have to accept people are selfish and spoiled. In those cases, you just shake your head and give them advice they might take: in this case. shooting off some personal fireworks and hanging with their households to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Perhaps other people, of a more charitable nature, will see your suggestion and carry it out over a cold weekend this winter. There will be many more to come.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: In regard to Insulted and Annoyed, who got a well-known regifter’s present in her girlfriends’ holiday gift-giving group, I think next year the regifter should get a calendar from the person who draws her name. — Her Just Deserts, Manitoba

Dear Just Deserts: You mean a free advertising calendar? Yes, that would humiliate her and put her in her place — but it wouldn’t look good on the person who did it.

Insulted and Annoyed mentioned the gifts were to be valued at around $40 — a fairly pricey present. I suggested the regifter maybe couldn’t afford that much and was not necessarily being cheap.

Your idea would certainly hurt the regifter and make her the laughingstock of the group. Why be so nasty? By regifting, this woman is at least handing along a fairly expensive $40 gift she got from someone else the year before.

Maybe it’s best not to make a fuss about this, as nobody will come out well by humiliating her.

Please send questions 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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