image source: Wikimedia Commons
Dear Reader:
I need your help. I’m addicted… TO ADVICE COLUMNS!
Ever since I was old enough to reach for the coveted “Lifestyles” section of the local newspaper. That’d be the Press & Sun Bulletin, FYI. The “Lifestyles” section back then had everything I needed to know:
- the funnies
- the horoscopes
- the advice columns
Barely old enough to imagine the sordid scenarios, I would hang on the words of readers who wrote in describing familial rifts and intolerable slights, begging for advice on how to handle the most complicated of romantic entanglements oh the drama!!! It’s a lifelong affair that’s stuck with me to this day.
If I have the day or afternoon to myself, I’ll spend hours perusing the archives of Dear Prudence or Care and Feeding over on Slate’s website — these being my two favorites — and if you know of any that I absolutely must check out, please send them my way!
Now, have you ever fantasized about writing into an advice column the way I have? Because I HAVE! Every time my roommates leave a stack of dirty dishes in the sink overnight, I just imagine what an advice columnist would say about this situation…
And then I don’t write in, because, honestly? My petty concerns are so boring and if you think about it, they’ll just tell me to have a mature and respectful conversation to defuse the situation and DUH! Like I’m actually gonna do that? Please. “Avoiding Conflict” is like, my middle name!
So for now, I remain an observer. Voyeuristically exploiting other people’s misery and confusion for my own entertainment purposes. And really, isn’t that what advice columns are really all about???
well… isn’t it?
HELP ME, DEAR READER!!!
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