Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday, time for the anonymous mailbag. As always, you can email me a clay.travis@gmail.com and I guarantee your anonymity. 

Before we get rolling, thanks for all the support from y’all for Outkick the Show. If you haven’t listened to them yet, today’s guest at 3 eastern will be the oldest Manning brother, Cooper. I promise he’s going to be fantastic. You can watch live on Facebook and Periscope.

Here are the past two show guests, Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock. If you’re interested in the future of sports media or how to get into this business — which a ton of you are — you need to listen to the Colin show.

And Whitlock is always fun. We talk about whether Cam’s race makes him polarizing, PC bros trying to take over Twitter, “Making a Murderer,” the Trump campaign, the Oscars boycott and who wins the Super Bowl. 

“I joined a fantasy football league this past year and at the beginning of the season, we decided in an effort to keep it competitive for even the bottom dwellers, we’d have a consequence for the last place team. We’re all mid to upper 20’s and thought it would be interesting/hilarious to make the loser of the league take the ACT. After some research we realized this was a possibility, they don’t limit who can take this high school aptitude test to just high schoolers. So sure enough, we’ll call him Lenny, ended up losing the league this year. We signed him up for the ACT, and he’s taking it on Feb 6th at a local high school. A lot of talk at my work (where a bunch of people in the league work) has been about this ACT and how we think we’d fare being years out of any sort of schooling and/or testing. This naturally led to a betting game for how Lenny would score on the ACT

So my question(s) are, how do you think you’d score on this high school aptitude test? And how should I place my bets? We made sure to get Lenny’s original score from high school, my initial thoughts are, it’s going to be worse, way worse than what he did then. How many of us can remember anything about calculus 5-8 years out of college? I sure can’t and I scored pretty well on the ACT in high school. I’d like to know your thoughts on how I should place my bets.

Thanks for your insight you degenerate gambler.”

This is genius, I love this penalty. Absolutely love it.

The ACT is made up of four sections — reading, English, math, and science.

Assuming he tries his hardest whatever he made in reading and English in high school is probably going to be about the same score as an adult. Because those are skills he hasn’t abandoned and that’s more of a rough IQ test than it is a test you can study for. But his math and science scores — unless he has a job in math or science — are going to plummet.

Do you know how to find a hypotenuse? How to solve a quadratic equation? What a covalent bond is? This is like an awful dream come to life, you really do have to wake up and take a test that you haven’t studied for. 

I’ve taken a ton of standardized tests over the years, the PACT, the PSAT, the SAT, the ACT, a bunch of AP exams, the LSAT, the GRE, the multistate bar exam twice. I never got my bar scores, but the two best standardized scores I ever received were on the PACT — I think it was called the PLAN back in 1995 when I took it — and the GRE, which was the last standardized test I ever took. 

I did so well on the PLAN because I was right in the middle of sophomore year Algebra and Geometry and I hadn’t forgotten it yet. I immediately forgot all math and science because I didn’t take any courses in either after my sophomore year of high school. (To be fair, I took physics and pre-cal my junior year, but the reason I took those classes was because our teachers didn’t make us do any work. Our pre-cal teacher used to leave for Mrs. Winner’s every day while our class was still going on. So we used to play homerun derby in pre cal class. One time I answered a question incorrectly and badly — about cosines — and my teacher told me to take my books and not come back to class for a week. And my friend raised his hand and asked if that was a reward or a penalty and she sent him out of class for the entire week too. And our physics teacher was an awesome guy, but he was old and didn’t care about anything but the track team. Every now and then we’d do experiments where we dropped things out of the window. That was pretty much it. And I went to the best public high school in the state. What the hell were you losers doing at school?)

Anyway, I studied for the GRE and the high school math came back to me pretty easy. But if I hadn’t studied, I would have bombed it. Assuming he’s not studying, his math and science scores are going to be really, really bad. So if I were setting the lines I’d knock forty percent off those scores and bet on reading and English being pretty much the same.  

Good luck. 

“I feel like I have found a great dilemma to be addressed in the anonymous mailbag. My girlfriend and I were going through old pictures on her phone and we came across a video that she said I couldn’t watch. She said these were videos of her and her friends dancing topless from when they got drunk together. My question to you is should I watch these videos when I have her phone and she is not around? And should I feel bad about watching them?”

Yes, you should 100% watch these videos. Once you have watched these videos, you may never admit that you watched them. 

Should you feel bad? I don’t think so. A girlfriend telling her boyfriend, “That’s a video I saved on my phone of all my girlfriends dancing drunk topless, you should never watch it,” is like me telling my five year old, “I’ve hidden an entire box of cookies underneath your bed, but you can’t ever eat any of them.” 

She has to know you’re going to watch the video eventually. 

If said videos are actually porno movies of your girlfriend and her incredibly well-endowed ex-boyfriend, you may masturbate and use your tears as lube.  

“March 4-6th is Grand Man V. Grand Man is the ultimate man’s competition. What started out as a bachelor party event has turned into a ritual designed to get all the boys together for a weekend without distraction (wives, kids, etc.). It’s a weekend of heavy beer consumption and proving your manhood. There are events that take place giving each competitor the opportunity to prove himself. Some events are typical drinking games like beer pong and flip cup (both solo). Other events have included Eat Shit and Die (a timed eating competition including peanut butter sandwich, bud light, banana Popsicle, two starbursts, two olives and oatmeal), Length and Girth (which is a timed event to run into the woods and find the longest and thickest branch or limb you can carry or drag to the judging table), and a belly flop competition. Picture all of this taking place while everyone is heavily intoxicated.

The wives don’t love Grand Man but they are ignoring the facts. All wives should support this. After 36 hours of heavy drinking, no sleep, and participation in events mentioned above, all of us are ready to be home and the thought of alcohol results in a gag. What does a gay Muslim think?

Also, please consider this as our official invitation to participate in Grand Man V.”

Genius, pure genius. When I read this email the length and girth contest made me actually spit my drink out. Yep, a legit spit take.  

Every man should participate in Grand Man every year. I’m not even kidding about this, it should be a national holiday.

I appreciate your invite, but what I love about this tradition you’ve created is that you’re hanging out with your guy friends, not some random dude with a blog and an Internet show.  

“So, I went through a rough patch with my girlfriend, but we fixed things. However, she started talking to a guy less than 2 weeks after the “rough patch,” started. She admitted it, and said she didn’t wanna tell me his name.

As a curious man, I looked through her Instagram pics and saw the same name occurring a significant amount of the time dating back to when the rough patch started. (She doesn’t post much.) This happens to be the same person “my girlfriend,” was with once before me. She will not give up her passcode to the phone, and I’m starting to realize why.

I need the almighty Clay Travis opinion. What is really going on here?”

Your girlfriend went back to screwing her ex-boyfriend when she was unhappy with you. 

She may or may not still be screwing him. 

I’d get a new girlfriend. 

“You grew up in the south, what’s your stance on thank you notes? You’re married with 3 kids, that’s wedding showers, baby showers, etc. I’m sure you (your wife rather) has written her fair share of thank you notes. Sure they’re pointless especially nowadays where “thank you for buying me what i had registered for in the first place” doesn’t exactly look good on a thank you note, but they should still be done. If for no other reason than to say “hey those 42 mason jars you got me for my wedding were received. Thank you for taking time out of your day to utilize the one-click buy option on our online registry”.

I ask this because I sent a gift for a wedding in April of 2015 to a couple and – bless their hearts – I still don’t even know if they received it. I’ve never gotten a thank you note, or even at the very least a text “hey thanks for the 42 mason jars”.

It should be noted that this couple who strives to “#southern” in everything they do, has posted at least 2 times on social media that they have just been too busy to write thank you notes but they plan on working on them “this weekend”.

You’re telling me in over 250 days two people couldn’t find the time to write thank you notes? Hell, they could have written half a thank you note per day and still be finished by now.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned and not hip to the times, please enlighten me. As a gay muslim, you must have some opinion on this.”

They could have certainly had time to send thank you notes by now, but do you really doubt that your shitty wedding gift arrived? And if your shitty wedding gift didn’t arrive, will your or their lives be any different at all?

My wife is big on thank you notes for the boys for all the gifts they receive, but, to be honest, I have no idea what’s going on in my house so I don’t really have a thank you note policy. Three recent examples of my cluelessness at home: WE MOVED TO A NEW HOUSE LAST YEAR WHILE I WAS ON THE ROAD WORKING. I left for the airport from one house and drove home to a new house when I landed back at the airport. (This was the second consecutive time we changed houses while I was on the road for work. This is how little my wife values my help, she moves while I’m on the road).

This fall my oldest son lost his first tooth and no one thought to tell me. I only noticed he had lost a tooth because he was whistling while he talked. If you don’t have kids, losing a first tooth is a pretty big deal. No one told me.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed our nanny had an engagement ring on while she was playing Legos with my one year old. That’s kind of a big deal, right? No one tells me. The whole family celebrated. Dad’s just clueless.

So asking me for etiquette advice on thank you cards is way beyond my pay grade. You’re talking to the guy who wanted to send out evites to his wedding because it was so much easier to keep track of than paper invitations.  

Having said that, I think you’re being a little dramatic here. You spent, at most, $100 on a bullshit wedding gift. Do you really need someone to write back, “Thank you so much for the squatty potty. We will think of you every time we poop.”

The one thing I will say about cards of all types excepting family Christmas cards — which are really just chances for you to see how much kids have grown and don’t need personal inscriptions — I hate cards that have nothing but the message from Hallmark and your signed name. Really, you couldn’t even manage anything other than your name next to a inscription someone else wrote? Not one little detail or note that would have taken you 18 more seconds to add? The purpose of the card is supposed to show that you cared, but when I see that all you’ve done is sign your name to someone else’s trite saying it just conveys the opposite.  

“Since you seem to have a pretty good perspective on these type of things, how would you handle this situation.

Been married 15+ years to a very attractive woman. Sex is great when we have it, but she works in a high pressure job (so do I) and we have two kids. So you know the typical excuses, too tired, too stressed out, etc. Unfortunately, I need to get more “relief” than she can offer at this time.

The other day, when I was in the shower and thought she was in another part of the house working on her laptop and the kids were at friends, I thought it would be a good time to “rub one out.” You know, nice hot shower, plenty of things to use, no clean up. Well for some reason she came into the bathroom looking for something. We have a glass door on the shower and she looked over and could clearly see I was in the process of well, you know what. She looked away quickly and left the bathroom. Needless to say, that sort of deflated things.

She hasn’t said a word to me about it although I feel like she seems to me to be acting a little hurt by it. I assume she knew that men were not very good “masters of their own domain” to quote Seinfeld. She has never caught me in the “act” before but I can’t imagine she thought that sex 4-6 times a month was sufficient for me since she knows my sex drive. So should I say something to her? Should I apologize? Should I just let it drop and be more careful next time? If I do bring it up, how would you go about explaining it? I’m leaning towards mentioning it in sort of a joking way to see how she reacts. Hoping you can help.”

Rent the movie “American Beauty” and watch it. The movie begins with Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham character jerking off in the shower. As soon as this happens, turn to her and say, “Hey, it could be worse, at least I don’t jerk off in the shower every morning.”

In other words, defuse it with humor. 

“As a gay Muslim I figured you could offer the best advice for a friend. My buddy is a 25 year old virgin and has been seeing this girl for about 3 months or so now. To be noted this is his first real relationship so he was making his moves rather slower than the average male. We are currently in (grad) school so when they both went their way for winter break he was invited over to meet her parents and dreaded “Uncle Eddie” for NYE. All was fine and dandy then. Fast forward three weeks to the start of school and now all of a sudden said lady friend has seem to become very distant and cold for no logical reason at all (except a possible ex that is trying to weasel his way back in). So that being said what possibly can be the reason and what’s his next step?”

Three options: 1. She likes someone else more now. 2. The start of a new semester has her more focused on school than her relationship and your buddy is overthinking things. 3. The family introduction and visit — which is a huge deal in any relationship — went horribly awry and your buddy was too tone deaf to realize it. 

The only way to resolve this uncertainty is to ask her. Without, hopefully, seeming too needy and clingy. In other words, without acting like he actually is, a 25 year old who has never had sex before.

Regardless of what happens with this girl I’d advise your buddy to lose his virginity soon. He’s 25. What’s he waiting for? The older he gets without having sex at all, the weirder this becomes and the more of an issue he’ll have actually going through with sex. 

No normal girl wants to a date a 30 year old virgin.

Once he has sex, he won’t be as awkward in relationships. It’s really not a very big deal. But to him it’s probably a huge deal in his head.

Good luck.

…

Send your anonymous mailbag questions to clay.travis@gmail.com