Letters to the Editor
Gwool
Published Letters: 353 Editor's Choice: 40
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Cart Before the Horse
[Read the article: We left paradise for the suburbs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hindsight is always 20/20, but the LW put the cart before the horse by buying the house BEFORE steady employment had arrived. It begs the question of how they managed to get a mortgage in the first place.
So the money woes exacerbate the problem of getting established in a new environment. Two of the biggest stresses in life are moving and buying a house, if she'd managed to get pregnant, they'd have hit the trifecta of marital stresses in one fell swoop.
None of this, of course, offers advice. They're locked into the house. Selling it to relieve the financial stress while hubby tries to get into the desired field might help, but what if the job arrives two weeks after selling the joint?
Seems the logical course of action is to lay out a time table. Stick at this current process for X number of months. At that point downsize. With the house demands gone, they could, indeed, high tail it to the bright lights of the big city or simply keep at it in a much cheaper venue.
As to establishing themselves in the community? This might sound corny, but the suburbs are built around families. If they get settled and start spitting out a family, they will begin meeting people in the daily activity of carting kiddies around. The first suburban location in which my wife and I landed, we really did not connect. We were DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids) who commuted ridiculous hours to our jobs and then went back in the city to party with friends on weekends. We moved shortly after having our first child.
In the next community we put down very solid roots, getting involved in all sorts of activities that revolved around children. The library, PTA, youth sports, municipal government. We've done the same in the current community.
If they want kids, then staying in suburbia makes some sense. Their difficulties seem one of financial planning skills. Get the job first, then the house. Get used to the budget, then spawn the critters.
So they did the first two bassackwards. Now it becomes a game of financial chicken. Stick it out and find that job, or flinch, cash out, and still try to find the job.
Not an attractive choice by any stretch of the imagination, but that seems to be where they are at. Whatever the cashflow strains, do not, do not, scrimp on birth control until the job comes around.
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On The High Horse
[Read the article: A fellow teacher got drunk and told me a secret]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I sense a woman about to go off on a moral crusade based on what she thinks is right with little to no regard for the privacy and cares of those with more direct attachment to the problem.
And, like all intruding, nosy do-gooders, she has already started to wrap herself up in the flag of "For the Children." She can break the drunken confidence of someone she hardly knows to out a teacher who may or may not still be working because she is doing it "For the Children."
Rather than worry about the goddamn cause, how about simply working with the person with whom she started up a casual relationship? How about making friends with the individual to determine if the allegation is, indeed, true? Maybe this other person is nuts rather than the twisted wreckage of some teacher.
I sense the Letter Writer was more looking for the green light to trash the person who confessed in an effort to be able to put the scalp of a molester on her "See-What-A-Good-and-Kind-Person-I-Am?" belt. She doesn't seem at all interested in becoming the friend of the woman. She just wants to "help" the woman by going after the ALLEGED molester.
That's not being a friend at all. Her eagerness to take over ought to send of alarm bells about the woman. If she cared about the woman she'd figure out a way to keep in touch and perhaps establish a friendship, but that quite clearly does not appear to be the motivation. Finding out the name of the teacher and whether or not they still teach in order to destroy them motivates the letter writer.
It could very well be the person deserves it. It could also very well be the drunken embellishments of someone with a rose colored version of a school girl crush, too.
But, hey, it's hard to worry about things like facts and human relationships when driven by the purity of advancing a cause in the name of children. We see such misguided piety all the time. Hence why offering up advice to the letter writer seems so pointless.