Dear Queenie,
After I graduated from college I got a good job off-island. Since then my parents have moved into a smaller house that only has one bedroom.
I used to have my own room in their old house, but now when I come home to visit them I have to sleep on the sofa in the living room and my parents don’t like for me to stay for more than a day or 2. It feels like they are shutting me out of the family.
Queenie, should I just accept this and keep quiet about it?—Rejected son
Dear Son,
You should talk this over with your parents.
It may be that they “downsized” for financial reasons. If that is the case, and if you can afford it, you could offer them some financial assistance.
At the very least – assuming you can afford it – you could offer to stay in a hotel when you come home to visit. Or – if they need financial help – you could offer to give them what a hotel would cost you.
Dear Queenie,
Today I was at a doctor’s office waiting for my turn to see the doctor when a woman came in with a very little boy who just couldn’t sit still, so his mother gave him a bottle full of water to play with and the kid started kicking it around the waiting room like it was a soccer ball and no one, not even the receptionist, tried to stop him.
Well, okay, but what if he had broken the bottle with his kicking and the water spilled all over the place, maybe even splashing on all the other patients waiting their turns?
To make things worse, I then saw the mother giving the same bottle to one of her kids, I think it was the same boy, to drink out of.
Queenie, I didn’t say anything to anyone about all of this, but good heaven, how disgusting can you get?—Impatient patient
Dear Patient,
I am glad you did not say anything, because doing so probably would have caused a scene. However, it is too bad the receptionist did not ask the mother to try to control her son or take him outside to play, or at least give him something else to play with.
And I agree with you that drinking out of the bottle that the child had been kicking around was highly unsanitary, even if none of the water had spilled out.
Hopefully, someone who was also present – if not the mother, maybe even the doctor and/or the receptionist – reads my column and will see this letter, and will remember it and take appropriate measures in case of a future such incident. Hopefully.
Dear Queenie,
My sister is dating a man who tells her she has gained weight and makes her feel guilty about the kind of food she eats and how much money she spends and what she spends it on. He even gets mad if we go out to a bar and have a few drinks. He claims he trusts her but he doesn’t trust who she may meet up with when she has been drinking.
Queenie, she says she loves him and wants to marry him. How can I convince her that this guy is just a jerk who wants to control her?—Worried sister
Dear Sister,
You cannot convince your sister, who is in love with him, that this man is a jerk. She will have to figure that out for herself.
The one good thing I see about him is that he worries about what might happen to her when she has been drinking, especially if she drinks enough to get a little – or more than a little – tipsy.
Dear Queenie,
My son has been married and divorced and now he is going to marry a woman who has never been married before.
Queenie, what should I say to people we invite to the wedding who also came to his first wedding and gave him gifts then? Should I put some kind of note like “No gifts, please” on the invitations to them?—Wedding invitation Etty Ket
Dear Etty Ket,
It is not good to put any such instruction on a wedding invitation (except possibly a request to donate to a certain charity instead of giving a gift). Some of your friends will want to give your son something in honour of his new marriage and some will not. Let them decide for themselves.
Dear Queenie,
I have been married for many years and recently my doctor told me I have a minor STD that I could only have gotten by having sex with a person who had it, so if I have been faithful to my husband then he must have cheated on me. The doctor also said I could have had the infection for a long time without having any symptoms.
Queenie, my husband says he has never cheated on me. How can I believe him?—Confused Wife
Dear Wife,
Were you and/or your husband sexually active before you got married? Is it possible that you have had this infection for all the time since then?
Your husband also should see his doctor and get tested for this infection, because if you have it probably he also has it, and you do not want to continue to pass it back and forth to each other, no matter who got it first and gave it to the other.
