Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday, time for the anonymous mailbag. 

FYI, I’m putting the anonymous mailbag up early today because we have a special Outkick Show at noon et today, Dean Strang from “Making a Murderer” will be on. 

It should be pretty outstanding, so if you’re reading this before noon eastern, then plan your lunch hour around today’s show. 

Here we go:

“Let me start with I am a truly blessed man. I was blessed to attend an SEC school, blessed to have met a hot girl there who later became my wife, and blessed that she loves SEC football.

We have had season tickets every year since we graduated. We now attend every home game, 1-2 away games, and the bowl game every year.

Here is issue- my buddies want to do a guys trip to catch an away game. When it comes to normal guy trips my wife is 100% supportive and generally does not care what I choose to go do or where I go. It’s only football game trips where this becomes a problem.

She always wants to go. She doesn’t want to miss one of our games and especially if I am getting to go to a big game she wants to be included.

What’s my play here? Do I just say thank you to the universe and “suffer” my fate of having a wife that never complains that I spend too much time watching college football, or is there a way to leave her behind for a weekend?”

I don’t think you tempt fate here. If your wife is as big of an SEC fan as you are, you don’t take a guy’s trip to a football game without her, you watch the games with her.

Plus, you say she’s fine with you going on a guys trip when it isn’t football season, just stick with those. Why would you want to spoil something that you both love by making her resent you over going to a big game that she watched at home?

I get why you want to do it — no matter how much you love your wife hanging out with a group of guys to watch a football game with no wives or girlfriends around is more fun than just going to a game with your wife. 

It just is. 

But you already have a good thing going here, this isn’t worth the hurt feelings or the lost goodwill. 

The only way I can think of you getting to do this is if you could somehow get a group of her girlfriends to go on a football weekend girls trip, but that’s probably too much work.

Congrats on picking a good wife. 

“Last week my wife was talking my daughter for a walk in the neighborhood and bumped into a lady who said she has two 20 year old twin daughters home for the summer from college looking for babysitting jobs. My wife and the woman exchange numbers and we meet the girls last week. They’re attractive and the combined length of the shorts they were wearing were still shorter than mine.

I put their numbers in my phone so I’d have them to contact when we need a sitter. My wife said that she should be the one that contacts them and thought it would be weird if I was texting them. Before we met them, she’s like, “what if they think you’re hot?” I said there’s nothing to worry about as it would purely be for the use of their babysitting services…I’m not in the market to cheat on my wife. (I personally can’t fathom having an affair…I barely can keep one life straight…I would definitely blow my own cover!) I think she just watches too many shitty Lifetime movies where stuff like this happens. I guess it’s possible an attractive younger dad/husband finds an ugly babysitter, leaves the kid with her, and goes on to have a 3 way with the hot twins, but I’m not ready to star in that movie.

Was my wife right that she should text the babysitters? And do you have any awkward babysitter stories?”

Your wife was 100% right that she should be texting the babysitters, not you. Especially if they’re hot 20 year old twins. 

I would think they’d prefer getting the text from your wife too. In fact, if two hot 20 year old twin babysitters — seriously is this Pornhub? — showed up at my house the idea of me being the one to get their phone numbers to set up babysitting wouldn’t even cross my mind. It wouldn’t cross the mind of the vast majority of men reading the mailbag today either. It would just be a recipe for disaster to even attempt this move. 

I think moms should be in charge of babysitting arrangements. My wife’s babysitting instructions are similar to the instructions to take off in a rocketship. I have three kids and I still have no idea all the details involved that a babysitter needs to know. 

The only time I ever took charge of babysitting issues was four years ago when we were in Michigan at a Mackinac Island resort and my wife and I got a babysitter from the hotel. We were just going out to dinner — you walk everywhere on the island because there are no cars so it’s one of the safest places in America — and our boys were four and two so we weren’t going to be gone long. Plus, the hotel offered a babysitting service so it was easy to set up. I remember the timing well because it was right in the middle of the Jerry Sandusky Penn State mess.  

So we book the babysitter and get ready to leave and I’ll be damned if a dude didn’t show up to be the babysitter.

I thought I was being pranked.  

My wife was giving this dude babysitter instructions — he was like 25 years old and European — and I said, “Sorry, I don’t feel comfortable with this.” My wife was horrified, but I said, “I want a girl babysitter for them.”

So the guy babysitter leaves and my wife is just looking at me with her jaw hanging open because I’ve never gotten involved in babysitting decisions before and I said, “I’m playing the odds here, a girl babysitter is infinitely safer than a guy babysitter. I’m sorry, I’m not leaving my boys in a hotel with a dude babysitter to watch them.”

So we got a girl babysitter, a junior in college and I was like, “Perfect, kids will be fine.” 

And the night went flawlessly.

But no way I would have gone out that night if there hadn’t been a girl babysitter.

“In your response to the woman who wasn’t pregnant who was asked about her due date, you said the male equivalent would be if someone asked you if your wife was your daughter because she is so much younger than you. About two years ago, my wife was in a minor traffic accident and she called me and asked me to drive over and help her out. When I got there, the guy that hit her came over to me and apologized and asked me if that was my daughter. The worst part of this is she is actually nine months older than me. We are in our late 30s but she is really hot and works out every day while I’m fat and bald headed. She thought it was the funniest thing ever and still brings it up today. I just thought I would let you know that it’s worse if you’re asked that and your wife isn’t younger than you.

And one more. 

“My wife and I met and got married in D.C., where it’s perfectly normal for couples to get married in their early thirties and not to have kids until they’re over 35. We moved to her hometown in rural Missouri, where many people get married right out of high school and have kids soon thereafter. When I’m out with my daughter, people regularly assume she’s my granddaughter.

That hurts.”

Okay, we continue. 

“Last week you answered a question about income and money. I have a related question about money and education. The question is whether to send my three children to Catholic school or public school.

I have found that there are a lot of good schools in my area and have narrowed in on 2 options. The first option is to send my kids to the local Catholic school. The cost of doing this through high school for 3 kids would be about $350k. The pros are: great test scores, Blue Ribbon school, religious education, church community, like-minded parents, and private school connections for my children. I went to similar schools and loved it. The second option is to move into a better school district and send our kids to public school. The increase in mortgage and taxes/insurance/fees/etc would be, you guessed it, about $350k. The pros are: very good public schools (though test scores not as strong as private), diversity in public school, slightly nicer house, and of course more equity (maybe $250k in 30 yrs?) in the home. My wife went to similar schools and loved it.

So, with costs being virtually identical, what’s more important? A potentially better school with a great community? Or, a potentially as good school with slightly lower scores, a slightly nicer house to live in, and a lot more home equity in case we ever needed it later in life? Education is very important to us, so we’re leaning private school. But, is that cost really worth the marginal difference? Since the money would be tied up in tuition bills or mortgage payments anyway, is it better to just take the private school education now rather than home equity that I may not really need in 20-30 years? To make things tougher, my wife is letting me make the decision. Thoughts?”

This is such a tough decision. And one that so many parents grapple with all over the country.  

I went to public school K-12 and loved it. But my public schools K-6 were just okay. Once I got to seventh grade I went to a magnet school, Martin Luther King, which I think is as good of a school as exists in the South. Honestly, 7th grade at MLK was tougher for me than any year in college or law school.

So my theory is the school being great matters, but what matters more than anything is being around other smart kids. My preference is for my kids to be surrounded by as many smart kids as possible. I can honestly say that from 7th grade on I never went to school with any dumb kids. And that’s invaluable because you end up learning as much, or more, from your peer group as you do from the actual school.  

When our oldest got school age the public schools in our downtown Nashville school district were awful. So we put our oldest in private school for kindergarten and first grade and we loved it. But then we had a third kid and we needed more space and so we moved to a much bigger house in suburban Nashville and put our oldest two in public school. The drive was just too far for the private school and we pay much less for our mortgage than we would have for two kids in private school and our old mortgage. 

But my thought is by 7th grade or so I want my kid to be in the best possible school, with little kid geniuses running around all over the place.

You’re making an either/or decision, but have you thought about public school until middle or high school? Or starting the public school, seeing whether your kids are doing well and then potentially adjusting your decision once you have more information?

Here’s my final thought — I wouldn’t change my mind based on the home equity. It’s nice to have that extra home value, but if you can afford the better school, I’d probably go with the better school with the smartest kids surrounding my kids possible. 

Good luck. 

…

Okay, time for the Outkick “Making a Murderer” special. 

Come hang out.