I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, but this piece in New York Magazine by Maggie Lange piqued my interest: “In 2023, I Resolve to Be Less Competent.” An excerpt:
There’s something triumphant about a total refusal to be useful. This was my reaction when I first learned about strategic incompetence, a recent hobbyhorse of the internet’s relationship ethicists. Also known as learned incompetence or weaponized incompetence, it’s often leveraged so that your shortcomings force someone else to fix the paper jam or call the super. Online, it has become shorthand for a highly gendered manipulation, by which men act baffled by the grocery store and all the burdens of domestic maintenance fall upon the women in their lives…
My selected incompetencies are my beloved limits. They’re a decisive strategy; they keep me from achieving things I don’t care about at all. And learned incompetencies make the people around me look good. Everyone else who is so much better than I am, at so many things — the ripped friends of the universe, the ones who can read transit maps, the ones who mandoline vegetables with gusto — will look at me and they will feel strong and skilled and useful. As they should.
Hear, hear! I plan to suck at writing résumés and prove absolutely inept at helping people move heavy objects in the year ahead. Any areas of competency that you plan to lose in 2023?
Open thread!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My traditional approach doesn’t need changing:
“Inner peace through lowered expectations.”
Sxjames
I would say writing whitty and insightfull bog comments, but I already suck at that, so I guess that doesn’t count, does it? 😊
bookworm1398
I first developed this strategy accidentally as a teen when I was asked to make coffee for the office. Events taught me that messing up did not lead to a scolding but to not getting asked to make coffee again. And I’ve been using it since then, not too frequently, but when I think it’s needed.
Ken
For years I got my mother to iron my shirts by setting up the ironing board, getting the iron hot, and then putting the shirt on the ironing board wrong.
In retrospect, I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what was going on.
Baud
Why would I adopt the same resolution as the Republican Parry?
Chetan Murthy
I learned of this concept (and its implementation) from a former friend (she turned out to be a somewhat out-of-the-closet homophobe, urrrrgh) and colleague. She and I were both being handed the hard tasks at work, and when she asked her manager why, he said “because if I give it to you, you’ll get it done; if I give it to one of the others, I’ll still have to give it to you after they fuck it up.”
I do feel a little sad sometimes that she’s “former”, but …. no way I can sit still listening to somebody be openly homophobic.
Alison Rose
Yeah…this sounds cute and all, but as the piece mentions, when men do this shit to women, which a lot of them do a lot of the time, it’s repugnant and annoying.
And it sounds like this could be more easily achieved by just telling someone, “Sorry, I’m not able to help you with that right now” rather than flailing around and pretending to be incompetent.
So I guess the thing I’m NOT going to be feigning incapability with is being a spoilsport.
Mike in NC
Netanyahu back again as Israeli PM. Are they fucking serious?
frosty
Sadly, I have no competencies I can lose. I’m mediocre at best at everything I do!
thelrd
Creative ineptitude is the way keeping one from reaching one’s level of incompetence!
thruppence
@frosty: Ah, you beat me to it! Not even competent at self deprecating comments
JaySinWA
Means that you will have to deal with the same issue sometime in the future, strategic incompetence promises the issue will never be revisited.
ETA I’ve seen women do this pretty blatantly. even flirtingly. I haven’t seen men do it in quite the same way. Perhaps they are better actors, or I have a lower opinion of male competence.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve been doing this, one way or another, for 60+ years. I just never knew there was a name for it until now.
bjacques
Good Soldier Schwejk would like a word.
oldster
I don’t know about becoming more incompetent, but I’m well on way to incontinence. Does that count?
oldster
@SiubhanDuinne:
“I’ve been doing this, one way or another, for 60+ years. I just never knew there was a name for it until now.”
Oh sure. You were just pretending not to know the name, so that someone else would have to say it for you.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chetan Murthy: It sucks that we have to suffer when we rightfully distance ourselves from people like that. It’s worth it, imo, but it definitely sucks that we still have to feel all the shitty feelings that come with losing people we cared about/liked.
LeftCoastYankee
There’s a great cheer common to English soccer fans when confronted with incompetence:
“You don’t what you’re doing! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Simple and to the point. The world would be better if a group of sodden loons showed up whenever incompetence rears up, and sings about it.
Alison Rose
@JaySinWA: Women trying to be cute by pretending to be incompetent is embarrassing as hell, to them. But when men do it, it comes from a very misogynist “women are here to serve me” mentality. Like, my bro, you definitely can figure out how to use the new washing machine.
And no, if you tell someone enough times “Sorry I can’t help you with that”, unless they are a complete idiot, they’ll get the message eventually. I guess I’m sour on this whole thing, even if it’s meant jokingly, because I’ve been the one in a few different life situations where people wheedled and coaxed me into doing shit for them that they were definitely able to do but just didn’t want to. All that will do is make people resent you.
M31
an old friend, upon becoming a professor, got this advice from his professor dad: “Son, when you get your first committee assignment, botch it.”
BethanyAnne
For years I maintained that I knew nothing about databases or networking at work. Nope, not me. I’m just a silly software designer.
Barbara
Feigned incompetence is how more than a few men try to get out of housework and child care chores. Maybe it has its place but I would rather just stand up for myself.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I had a job working at the business office my Freshman year of college. They expected me to file, answer phones, stuff mailboxes, and run errands. I didn’t like answering phones as an 18 yo. Most times when the phone rang I would stand up and leave the office. I was relocated to the basement mailroom after a few weeks. I was much happier there.
Barbara
@Alison Rose: You and I apparently are on the same wavelength. “I’ll show you how to use the washing machine, that is, if you really want clean clothes.” Laundry, in particular, annoys me — I taught each of my kids to do their own laundry when they turned 8, to use cold water to avoid laundry mishaps and not bother me about it. We all do our own laundry in my household.
lollipopguild
@Baud: Baud2024Just say no to learned helplessness.
Josie
My two older sons accused my youngest of doing this very thing. He remained incompetent for a number of years and enjoyed himself greatly. Finally, however, they both were gone, and he was the only one left at home with me. He was unmasked and has turned out to be quite competent. They took great satisfaction in seeing it happen.
Poe Larity
As preternaturally unememployed barstool comic uncle always said, “you did the best you could do”
It took a long time to figure out that was actually a clue.
lollipopguild
@Old Dan and Little Ann: My daughter when she was in college working 15 hrs a week in the office that was trying to bring in new students, she basically ran the office for them, the actual staff people would just give her everything to do.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC: It’s sounding grim. Commentators are trying to frame him as “moderate” and thus, will keep his extreme RW coalition partners and cabinet members in check.
Where have I heard this before?
Also, too, evidently the Israeli judicial system is glacier-paced, as Bibi’s trial has “years” to go before resolution.
Prediction: they’re ready to openly seize and colonize the West Bank, world opinion be damned. Current piecemeal process is just not fast enough.
lollipopguild
@Mike in NC: Groundhog Day, Israeli version.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@lollipopguild: It was just me and the main secretary who may or may not have been more than 100 years old.
CaseyL
I’m single and live alone.
Except for cats – I have lived with cats my entire adult life, including the intervals when I lived with a human partner.
And let me tell you, cats are The Very Best at that “manipulative incompetence” thing.
Exhibit A: If your dwelling has more than one door, and you’re having a spell of bad weather, the cat will go from door to door to door repeatedly, looking for the one that leads to sunshine, for as long as you’re willing to open those doors to show the cat that, no, it really is the same weather out the back door as it is out the front.
Exhibit B: Feeding time. You open a can of food that your cat has liked in the past. You put the dish down. The cat looks at the food, maybe sniffs it, maybe even takes a tentative nibble. Then gives you a look of searing contempt… or, when that doesn’t work, a piteous “I am Unloved and, Also, Starving” expression. Until you try again with another can…. and maybe a third. (I don’t fall for this one much anymore, but once in a while… )
Amongst humans, I don’t fall for this quite so much. I might fall for it a time or two, but once I realize what’s going on, I stop. I don’t say why, I just say “Gosh, sorry, can’t do that” – and then walk away. If the someone else just won’t do whatever Thing they tried to get out of, hoping I’ll do it for them, they’re in for a shock. The Thing simply won’t get done.
geg6
For years, I have avoided being assigned to committees, after a decade of serving on dozens of them, simply by telling my boss not to do it again. Ever. I’m fine with the two I find useful (scholarship committee and our student success one) but in the past year, I’ve been roped into extra assignments by higher powers, our campus chancellor and the University’s VP for Commonwealth Campuses. You can’t really say no to them. Which sucks. I was really hoping to retire in a few years without this bullshit making my life more difficult. And I’ve worked here long enough that I can’t feign incompetence because they know better.
Brachiator
OT. Brazilian football legend Pele has passed away, age 82. An artist at his game.
Nelle
@Mike in NC: It’s what has me fearing the return of the orange menace or some mini-me.
Shakti
Alas, life keeps trying to make me competent at things I’d rather be strategically incompetent at.
For example, I do not want to be the keeper of lists and organizer of things and upseller of services but that’s what people keep hiring me for and what family and friends keep asking me to do.
I’m job searching and these are what my “accomplishments” are. Unfucking your records mess. Training people. Making sure people get their money. Reacting to things. :/
I would rather think about systems and link together disparate things. It’s especially aggravating because I’m 99% I have ADHD.
MattF
I had a roommate in college who claimed he didn’t know how to wash dishes.
Ruckus
I’m retired, my only real needs of competence are, not falling down in the shower, still being able to chew, knowing where my fucking glasses are at any one moment – even if they are on my damn face, and food shopping. It’s a small list but each item has importance in getting through the day….
SiubhanDuinne
@oldster:
LOL
Brachiator
Definitely with you on the moving heavy objects thing.
Captain C
My MD-PhD-having grandfather claimed to be unable to operate a toaster.
Evap
@Barbara: we did the same, taught our offspring to do laundry when they could reach the machine and never looked back. It was one of the smartest parenting decisions we made. The thing about laundry is that somebody else not doing their laundry doesn’t really affect me, unlike, say, a dirty kitchen
opiejeanne
@Alison Rose: LOL!
It could also be called “learned helplessness”. I have two family members who enjoy being helpless, both women, and it’s amazing how they are sometimes able to stop being helpless when there’s no one to reward them by fixing stuff for them. It’s annoying
And my husband, a retired civil engineer, hates computers so he has avoided learning how to use his laptop for anything other than reading news. I only recently found out that he had never set up his email account on it, also couldn’t access his retirement information on his iPHone. He’s 75, I’m 72. I set it all up for him, showed him how to use some of the nice features to find what he wants on his computer, and then I asked him what he plans to do if I die first. That shook him, but I suspect it was the prospect of not having a nagging wife rather than what will he do without me.
patrick II
On the flip side, be careful that you aren’t subconsciously considering yourself incompetent at something you could be pretty good at.
different-church-lady
@Chetan Murthy: As a freelancer, I get to see a lot of different work environments. And one common phenomenon I’ve noticed is that in many places there is one competent person in the entire department, and that one person’s competence is the only thing that allows all the others to keep their jobs.
Shakti
@JaySinWA:
Perhaps they’re better at flattering the ego of the person who they want to step in? I don’t feel flattered when someone forgets how to wash dishes or make lists; I feel overwhelmed.
My dad and brother never did the gendered chores so someone telling me I’m so much better at housekeeping or being diplomatic doesn’t work on me.
Alison Rose
@Barbara: Yep.
WaterGirl
@Captain C: You added a “D” to .com on your email address, so your comment went into moderation. You’ll want to fix that so your comments don’t continue to do that.
different-church-lady
As a coping tool, I reject this technique, both in myself and in others. It is, to put it in one simple word, pathetic.
It’s might be just me, but I don’t find it cute. Everyone gets lazy, everyone looks for short-cuts, everyone looks for a way out of doing things they don’t enjoy. But all of that shit needs to be rejected if you want to have even some small, basic level pride in your own existence.
Admitting you’re not good at something is the sign of a well-balanced person. Rejecting the opportunity to become better at something is a kind of sickness of the soul.
JML
RIP, Pele. Still the greatest.
Paul in KY
@oldster: That is what a true pro would do. Good job on catching that!
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Damn, that is succinct.
James E Powell
@Sxjames:
That and spelling.
Paul in KY
Back when I was a teen, I used to work at my uncle’s scrap metal yard to make some extra money. We would start out by cleaning the office and then move out into the yard. The office was nasty, but it was ever so much nicer than out in the yard.
On a real nasty day, my cousin was in our Uncles’s office and turned over his big office chair. He then produced a buck knife and slashed a big slash on bottom of chair. He then ‘discovered’ this and proceeded to take 2 hours repairing it while we worked with nasty wet cardboard out in the yard.
I wish I had thought of that…
BruceJ
Gee whenever I tried botching a chore as a kid…my parents just made me do it again until it was done right. Which is how I discovered that doing it right the first time turned out to be a hell of a lot less work.
FastEdD
While I realize that some people use feigned incompetence to get their way, most men and women in my world are equally incompetent and don’t try to use it to gain an advantage or to get out of work. When my partner was struggling with cancer for years and years, I did everything. Housework, cooking, cleaning, home repairs, shopping, driving to doctors’ appointments. I wasn’t very good at some of them, but I didn’t have any choice in the matter.
One of my favorite theories about getting out of doing a job is that of “Moose Turd Pie.” U. Utah Phillips’ tale of railroad workers. If you complain about the job someone else is doing, that job is now yours. Although a friend of mine from Alaska says moose turds aren’t really like the ones in the song.
Tom Levenson
I plan to be less–I’m not sure competent is the word–eager to write the next book proposal.
It turns out I’m very good at thinking up book projects and describing them persuasively in 10-30 pages. So I’ve been on deadline since my late 20s–almost four decades now (some films to go with the books, but the principle is the same).
I am freaking tired. So I am hoping to persuade myself to be a little less on top of that part of the process.
(One of the best days of working on a book is when you get the contract. The absolute worst is the same day when you realize that “f**k! Now I have to write it.”)
narya
Speaking of (in)competence, I might maybe have finally reassembled the rowing machine, with the belts and washers and pulleys in the correct places. I’m charging the new Bluetooth module for the new monitor that will allow me to track my exercise. It has taken me about four times as long to do this as it probably should have taken, but if this is successful, then, when the weather really goes to hell, I do not have to go outside.
I agree with a lot of the comments above, though I’ve been fortunate to avoid this in my own life. I do recall one “reverse” version of this, when I first started working at the bakery. The sacks of flour weighed 50 lbs. and resided in the basement; the first time I needed to get flour, I could tell that my male coworkers were waiting to see what I’d do (e.g., would I ask for help, ask them to do it, etc.). I hefted a bag on my shoulder and brought it upstairs w/o comment.
Tom Levenson
@Tom Levenson: Meanwhile, my wife is in fact more competent than I am at lots of stuff, from cooking (she’s a former professional chef), to anything with tools (she’s a sculptor, painter and installation artist, has been a modern art gallery installer, and built her first house with her then partner), and as a logistics/life organizer (she’s won a bunch of fancy awards for her work as a TV production designer, which means that she has run production teams on multi-month gigs, which means she knows her way around stuff, spreadsheets and craftspeople).
So I actually have to fight to do some of the things I love to do, like cooking, in domains where she is clearly better at it than I am but I still like the work.
I do have my own areas of competence, and we mostly have a good division of labor…but it is funny at the edges. And yeah–I married up.
James E Powell
@Barbara:
Seven kids in my family & both parents worked. Lists of things that had to be done by the time they got home. Laundry included. I remember hanging jeans in the basement by the furnace using these wire pants stretcher things. We had regular routines of laundry, cleaning, mowing the lawn, etc., that started so early that I don’t remember how old I was when I began. Cooking was something we couldn’t do till older, but peeling potatoes, shucking corn, etc., we did early.
Steeplejack
Citizen Alan
@Barbara:
I am reminded of how one of Bill Cosby’s most famous and memorable standup routines involved his wife making him get up to make breakfast for the kids. He got up but was a perfect ass about it until one of the children asked for chocolate cake for breakfast. After initially dismissing the idea, Cosby suddenly recalled that cake contained milk eggs and flour, and he reasoned that it therefore was perfectly acceptable as a breakfast food, much to the joy of his children. Naturally, his wife was not abused.
It was a very funny bit. Pity he turned out to be a grotesque rapist.
Citizen Alan
@Barbara:
I am reminded of how one of Bill Cosby’s most famous and memorable standup routines involved his wife making him get up to make breakfast for the kids. He got up but was a perfect ass about it until one of the children asked for chocolate cake for breakfast. After initially dismissing the idea, Cosby suddenly recalled that cake contained milk eggs and flour, and he reasoned that it therefore was perfectly acceptable as a breakfast food, much to the joy of his children. Naturally, his wife was not abused.
It was a very funny bit. Pity he turned out to be a grotesque rapist.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
RIP
Pele was the first time this young Black girl:
Paul in KY
@James E Powell: My dad was out in the family fields hoeing corn & pulling weeds when he was 5. This being about 1930. Also under the overseeing of his older brother Willie. Believe me, you did not want Willie as your boss. Especially a teenaged Willie.
He was happy we got into WW II, as it got him the hell away from Eastern KY (and Willie).
NoraLenderbee
Strategic incompetence at work may be the only way to keep from being overloaded or stuck with tasks that aren’t part of your job. Just make sure you don’t use it to avoid tasks that *are* your job.
In basic life skills and chores, though–no, just no. No one able-bodied and of sound mind “can’t” learn to do laundry or load the dishwasher or mop the floor. That said, no one has to be good at everything, and it’s OK to divide up chores by who’s better at it, as long as everyone feels it’s fair. I don’t work on our cars. My husband doesn’t clean the cars or the litter box. We’re both OK with that.
Geminid
@Mike in NC: This was a closer election than the 64-56 Knesset majority won by Netanyahu’s 4-party coalition would indicate. The pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs won roughly equal shares of the vote.
Israel’s proportional representation system, with its 3.25% threshold for Knesset representatation, did the opposition in. The Arab party Balad finished with 2.85% and the liberal party Meretz got 3.16%. Reaching 3.25% would have won them each 4 Knesset seats but instead they were blanked and what could have been a 60-60 outcome intead was an unforseen 64-56 result.
So after protracted negotiations with his distrustful coalition partners, Netanyahu has created what will probably prove Israel’s worst government ever. One disgruntled MK from Netanyahu predicted that this government will not last out its allotted 4 1/2 years because of its internal contradictions. And a former Israeli Defense Force chief warned that if the radical and racist policies of the 16-member National Religious bloc are put into effect, there will be a civil war.
Poe Larity
@Citizen Alan:
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: There’s an old saying that if you want something done, you give it to a busy person. There’s also an old saying that no good deed goes unpunished.
Leslie
@Poe Larity: Eww. How much do you want to bet a bunch of right-wingers go to see him on misogynist solidarity grounds, with bonus “see, we’re not really racist” points. Hopefully everyone else stays away.
Miss Bianca
@Poe Larity: Wait, is he going to be out of jail in 2023?
Poe Larity
@Miss Bianca: His conviction was overturned in 2021
Geminid
@Geminid: That should be “one disgruntled MK from Netanyahu’s Likud party…”
Miss Bianca
@Poe Larity: It was? Damn, I didn’t know that.
ETA: On what grounds?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan: Bill Cosby refused to do Marc Maron’s WTF podcast (back when Maron wanted him) because the F stood for a swear
ETA: @Miss Bianca: it’s all legal blatherskyte to me, but it’s on his wiki page. The trial judge admitted testimony that he PA SC said s/he shouldn’t have, is the short versio
ETA, A: It’s one of the cautionary tales I would offer up to the OMIGOD WHY HASN’T GARLAND THROWN HIM IN JAIL YET! crowd. And Cosby didn’t appoint the judges who sprung him.
The Moar You Know
As the company IT guy, I get all the shit tasks that everyone else “does not know how to do” so I’m more than a little resentful about it.
I will carry a permanent grudge against the asshole that called me when I was in the recovery room after my insane major surgery of 2021 (I could hardly remember my own name at that point much less anything else) and he will get his one day, but at least I got the jerkwad who tried to rope me into his bullshit right while I was having our last dog put down fired. And his subsequent career, and life, ruined. Do not fuck with IT. We know everything and keep copies. My users can play those games with their management all they like but if they start trying to blame their poor performance on me I just send their boss a log of all their browsing activity for the last three months and escalate from there.
As the lawyers say, everyone’s guilty of something. It’s very true.
Another Scott
@Citizen Alan: I had a couple of Cosby’s albums as a kid and wore them out. Revenge, etc. I enjoyed them, but even back then recognized that they weren’t really “funny”, he just told stories.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: The 80/20 rule is real!
dnfree
@opiejeanne: We have always had a division of labor whereby I handle computers (and now phones also) and my husband handles audio-visual equipment. Both our areas are much more complex than they used to be. Remember when you could turn a TV on and adjust volume and change channels with a knob? Now it takes two different remotes, in our house, to turn on the TV (one for the TV, one for the sound system). And I don’t even know which two remotes they are! I don’t want to know.
Lee Hartmann
All of them, Katie.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady:
Life is relatively short, so our opportunities to develop expertise are limited. Maybe being choosy about what we focus on is a good thing! (As long as you’re not being a dick by exploiting someone else.)
Omnes Omnibus
I have a number of skills that do not relate directly to my employment that I do not necessarily advertise at work. A lot of the time, these are skills that someone else is paid to do. Often they are better than I am. Why would I try to take their job? In an emergency, sure. If the toilet is flooding the floor, I can step in, but, as a rule, snaking a drain is for plumbers. No one really needs to know I can do that or that I am pretty damned good with a pallet jack for someone in my line of work.
OTOH I can’t sew for fuck. I can sew on a button if I have to, but not really well. If I can get someone else to do that for me, I feel no guilt about it. I can probably return the favor some other way. FWIW I am damned good at ironing.
Captain C
@WaterGirl: Thanks–wasn’t on my usual computer, so I’ll keep an eye out.
OzarkHillbilly
A progressively crippled arthritic body takes care of my ever increasing indignities… I mean incompetencies.
Mel
@Barbara: My great-grandmother and family lived on a farm, and she started working outside the home as well (nursing) when her kids were school-aged.
She used to tell her husband and kids and grandkids: “You don’t have to like it, but you still have to do it”, when it came to taking their turn at washing dishes, helping with laundry, cleaning up the mudroom, etc.
If someone didn’t do their turn, then their laundry didn’t get washed with the family laundry, or they didn’t get a plate set at dinner, etc.
It didn’t take long for everybody to decide that doing a household chore once or twice a week was a lot less unpleasant than wearing dirty shirts and dirty underwear, or having to wash their own dinner dishes while everyone else was enjoying dinner already.
She was a woman ahead of her time, and a force of nature.
Redshift
A few jobs back, I learned an important related concept, “things that don’t go on my resume.” They’re the result of, for example, having to work with a system so arcane and unpleasant that, while I did learn it, I never want any other job to expect me to know it. By this tactic I have successfully avoided working on those horrible things ever again. (Lotus Notes and MS Sharepoint integrations are the most prominent examples. Ugh.)
I’ve also passed along this practice to some of the next generation, who, like me, find it simultaneously amusing to tell stores about, and really useful.
lurker
The big plan is to suck at lurking …
oh wait, they saw me … now I have to hide again…
sab
I was intending to resolve to be more competent, since I let everything non-essential slide last summer when spouse almost died after his back surgery and then, having survived, a much longer and tougher convalescence.
So I resolve to get my act back together in most things.
The one exception is changing the kitty litter. We have five cats so six boxes. I do all the dog duties. I feed the cats. I wash their little cat dishes every day. Why do I still have to clean their litter boxes daily to the high standard my husband had led them to expect?
ETA I also cook most meals and do most dishwashing. He vaccuums and used to mow the lawn. But I hate changing all those litter boxes. A genius cat would pee in my room as motivation, but cats aren’t as devious as everyone thinks they are.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Oh I’m all for being choosy. What I meant was there’s a certain kind of person who will reject any and all opportunities for learning.
Helen
After working a number of years, I recognized that there were some people who had to be always very busy and, if possible, in charge. Their purpose wasn’t to get the job done, but to show everyone how ‘essential’ they were. At some point, I decided to focus on my job and let them be busy. Did they resent that I didn’t help them? Don’t know, don’t care.
sab
@sab: I should be better at the litterboxes because the cat love of my life has failing kidneys and he pees like a goat under stagelights. (Ever been involved with staging South Pacific?)
sab
Having the kids do their own laundry works great when they are so small and short that they are barely competent. Didn’t work so well when my teen kid was bleaching his jeans in the load before my office work clothes. Or when he was dyeing everything black before I put my office workshirts in the laundry, expecting them to turn put white.
WaterGirl
@lurker: We don’t bite. Most of us, anyway!
sab
@WaterGirl: Speak for yourself!
Although I did stomp on a lurker disagreeing about a book I hadn’t read in 30 years. Lurker went away, and re-reading the book the lurker was absolutely right. That has worried me a lot over the years.
I am more careful now.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: I had a clouple Richard Pryor albums that had plenty of play. “Been smokin crack for 20 years, ain’t hooked yet.”
Leslie
@sab:
Yes, but so long ago that I don’t recall the reference.