Opinion

Many non-pet owners can’t understand the love people have for their pets. They dress them, groom them, cook special food for them, have expensive toys, etc. They even refer to their pets as their children. I don’t have a pet, but my cousins and aunt do (and apparently, I have a four-legged first cousin).

Dear Goldy:

I don’t even know how to write this without sounding harsh, but here goes: My mother and my boyfriend’s mother don’t like each other. And I know that my boyfriend is going to propose soon.

In last week’s paper, I published a letter from a friend of a friend who had been dating someone for five years. Years. She thought he was her bashert and was waiting for the moment it would be made official. But that was not to be. She visited her boyfriend and his family over Pesach, at his insistence in Florida, only to have him break up with her there and basically kick her out of his life.

Dear Goldy:

This isn’t really a dating question, but maybe you can help, since you are a social worker. My daughter is about to become a kallah. Both families have met twice already, and everything is moving forward. It’s just a matter of setting up the engagement moment. For some reason, my six-year-old grandson seems to hate his “new uncle.” They’ve met three times and, each time, my grandson refused to get close to the Eli (fake name) to shake his hand “mazal tov” or to introduce himself. My grandson is not shy, and he didn’t give off that shy type of behavior. He seemed angry and has been saying that he doesn’t want my daughter to marry Eli. He doesn’t want to speak with my soon-to-be son-in-law and tells everyone that he doesn’t want my daughter to marry him.

I have seen and been through a lot during my decades in this world. I thought I was beyond the stage of being horrified the way that some people treat others. Sometimes, the meanness is a reaction to something. You did this; well, I’ll do that to get back at you. It’s a spur of the moment thing. Or the meanness can be planned between a few people. A thought-out calculated plan. Yes, it sounds devious. Because it is. Remember “No soap radio” – a “joke” popular when I was younger? This is how the “joke” worked: Two or more people would get together and plan that when someone else joins them, one of them will say “No soap radio.” Everyone is supposed to laugh. If the person who just joined laughs along (to be part of the crowd), you would ask him what’s so funny about that – getting him to admit that he didn’t understand the statement and just wanted to be included in the fun. Or if the person didn’t laugh, the others laugh harder, because “You don’t get it? It’s such a simple joke.” Either way, others planned to say or do something that would cause another to feel bad about himself – because either way that you answered, you were going to be questioned or laughed at.

Picture this: Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl seem to like each other and date for a period of time. Boy is enjoying the time spent with Girl, but he’s just cruising along – not thinking too much about the future or if the relationship will move forward. He’s just enjoying the here and now. Then, one day out of the blue, BAM! BOOM! Girl surprises Boy by moving the relationship forward in a very unexpected way. What is Boy to do? Remember, he hadn’t put much thought into the future. He was just enjoying the here and now. But now he is forced to decide. Was it right for Girl to do this or was girl so tired of waiting for Boy to take action, that she decided to take matters into her own hands? It’s a hard call.