Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday, time for the anonymous mailbag to whisk you away from work or school. (Hopefully you are back at both and not cowering in your basement underneath the covers like so many coronabros out there.)

College football begins in earnest on Thursday and we have games on Saturday and Monday before we roll into the first NFL game on Thursday the 10th and then ACC and Big 12 games next weekend.

It’s a great time to be a sports fan.

As always send your anonymous mailbag questions to clay.travis@gmail.com, anonymity guaranteed.

Okay, here we go:

“I am a senior attending a Big Ten school. My friends and I (a group of about 10) are not worried about getting COVID, as we are all young and fairly healthy. We all agree it is not the best idea to go out and attend large house parties, but we aren’t going to stop hanging out together and drinking. The school made all students sign a pledge before we came back saying we would adhere to social distancing and mask wearing. Recently the school has been suspending people who have been attending parties at off campus houses and apartments, with some “parties” being only 12-15 people. So the question is, how should my friends and I handle this? We don’t want to spend our last year of college hiding in our basements and not seeing each other, but we also do not want to get disciplinary actions thrown at us.”

You don’t want to risk expulsion, but I’d find out how many people are allowed to attend a gathering and ensure you follow the letter of the college law for all your social events. Is the limit ten? Then I’d have ten people there.

I’d also bet most of these students are getting caught because they are posting on social media. So if you’re going to do something that’s borderline unacceptable: DON’T POST PHOTOS ON SOCIAL MEDIA DOING IT.

It’s insane to me how many college kids can’t just have a good time without having to document every single minute of every single event. We all get it, your lives are awesome. Put down your phones.

Look, I can pretend to lecture you guys in college about how you should behave in the covid era, but the truth is if this was my junior or senior year of college, there’s no way I wouldn’t be pushing these rules — and probably going beyond them — on a regular basis.

Put it this way, how often did you do something that could get you evicted from your dorm or off campus apartment when you were in college? Probably almost every weekend that happened with you or one of your friends.

I think many of the people lecturing college kids now have completely forgotten about all the ridiculous things they did when they were in college.

What I 100% would not do, however, is come in close contact with any elderly or unhealthy people. That is, I would essentially create my own college bubble and ask my friends to do the same. This is pretty easy to do on a college campus.

The data reflects that college kids are going to be fine if they get covid. But I would, for instance, consider not going home for Thanksgiving and eating dinner with my grandparents or elderly relatives as soon as I get back home from college.

It just seems smart to quarantine yourself before interacting with older people at Thanksgiving or Christmas when you go back home at the end of the semester. And I think many colleges that are shutting down before Thanksgiving break are being very smart to do that.

So I’d be less concerned with my behavior on campus — where almost everyone you know is young and healthy around you — and more concerned about my behavior when I left campus to go back home at the end of the semester.

“I’ve decided I’m miserable at my job and just can’t do it anymore. I was going to wait until I had something else locked down but decided to rip the band aid off and I’m quitting this afternoon. Any advice on how to move forward? I know you have experience at quitting a job you hated.”

I’ll never advocate quitting a job when you don’t have another one lined up — especially not in this current economy — but I do think there’s value in being able to recognize when a job doesn’t make sense and planning an exit.

Importantly, you need to make sure that the job actually sucks and you’re not just averse to working hard or lamenting the loss of your college or grad school freedom.

There are very few jobs that don’t suck compared to school.

So I think you need to give every job you try at least six months to confirm you don’t enjoy it.

My advice, look at your boss’s job and then at your boss’s boss’s job (if you can get an idea for what that’s like). Would you want to have those jobs one day? If the answer is no, you need to find a new job.

“I made a comment to my older sister about the Arizona School Superintendent and how she supports boys wearing makeup and my sister responded “What’s wrong with boys wearing makeup? What are the consequences of encouraging boys to wear makeup?” I tried to answer but my sister wasn’t satisfied. How would you answer that?”

First, I don’t really care if men wear make up. I don’t personally choose to do that, but the cosmetic decisions of other men aren’t really my concern. I also don’t wear blue jeans so tight my cock and balls can’t breathe and look like frozen Han Solo in my pants, but that’s what young kids do. Their choice, not mine.

So far I don’t choose to dye my hair either. Maybe when I’m fifty I’ll reconsider that decision, but right now my plan is to just let my hair go gray. Until, that is, my wife leaves me and I have to pretend that I’m still young.

My point is, I really don’t get that worked up about people doing things in their private lives that don’t impact me directly in any way.

So my question is, why do you care about boys wearing make up? My experience has been that, in general, men do things that make it more likely that women will sleep with them. I tend to think women are less likely to sleep with men in make up than in men out of make up, but maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe there’s an entire ocean of pussy I’ve missed out on because I didn’t wear blush.

Roll the dice, kid, may the better (lipsticked) man win.

(It’s also important to note that when you do TV they put make up on you. I don’t put make up on myself for TV every day, but if I’m in a studio they do it for me. And I’m used to it and don’t think it’s that big of a deal).

Personally, I think people way overreact to what young kids do these days. When I was a kid my grandmother used to paint my fingernails. That was back in 1984 or so. I suspect today that would be considered a sign that I was gender nonconforming and it was some grand and important decision I’d made about my life. But back in 1984 it just meant I thought it was neat to have painted fingernails.

My point here is I think we, as parents, often wildly overreact to the things our kids do. I suspect that’s because we pay way more attention to our kids than people did fifty or sixty years ago. Certainly we pay way more attention than parents did 100 years ago or more. That means we way overcompensate and overanalyze our kids. The result is a huge collection of kids that are overparented.

Now I’d guess in the grand scheme of things if you have to choose between overparenting and underparenting that overparenting is a better option, but it creates its own challenges, namely kids are terrified of the real world and unable to handle independence. Especially at ages when it would be common to be seeking independence.

I honestly think this is a big part of the coronavirus response. How many generations of American kids would have ever allowed themselves to be shut inside for months so they didn’t go outside and potentially get sick from a virus that is less deadly to them than the seasonal flu? Hardly any. I mean, this is madness.

But kids are terrified of the real world these days because their parents have sheltered them to such an extent.

I love my mom and dad, but when I went away to college I’d talk to them once or twice a week when I happened to be in my dorm and they called. (I didn’t have a cell phone in college). Nowadays it seems like kids are in constant contact with their parents.

As a parent, I don’t necessarily think that’s healthy. In fact, I think the less often your son or daughter calls you from college, the better their life is probably going.

So far my oldest son, who will turn 13 in January, doesn’t have his own cell phone. We’ve told him we’ll get him a phone when he gets to high school, but I’m not even that excited, honestly, about him having a cell phone then. Because I think it’s healthy for teenagers to develop independence from their parents and I think independence is harder to develop with phones.

Anyway, my point is, I think we are way overreacting to everything kids do. Most of the time their choices don’t signal fundamental life decisions in adulthood.

At some point my grandmother stopped painting my fingernails. I don’t remember how old I was when she stopped, probably six or seven years old, when I reached the age that I wasn’t interested in having painted fingernails any more.

I wasn’t a gender non-conforming kid making some grand statement with my painted fingernails. I didn’t view it as being very different than my grandfather putting shaving cream on my face and pretending to shave my face. When you’re a kid, it’s fun to pretend to be an adult.

We’ve turned kids playing dress up into a major life decision when it’s really not that at all.

“I’m a happily married 38 year old with three girls under the age of 8. Okay, happily is a stretch. Our sex life is lacking to say the least. I try what I can to spice it up, knowing she’s always so tired/stressed. On top of it, Covid doesn’t help. We are all stuck at home all day, all the time, which is not conducive to a great sex life.

I went out on a limb a couple months ago and bought a couple sex toys online to try and spice things up, a clit toy for her, and a “guybrator” for me. The thing is, since then we’ve used the clit toy numerous times on her, but the guybrator is still a secret. That is, I’ve used it a couple times on myself without her around (it’s amazing) but have yet to tell her that we have that toy too.

My question is: am I being a wuss by keeping my own sex toy a secret? Should I be open with her about having a sex toy for me too? Seems like if we can use one on her we can use one on me. Why do I feel so guilty about having a sex toy for me too?”

Full confession: I think any man using a sex toy other than his hand is trying too hard. Because if there’s any male sex toy out there that’s better than the hand, I haven’t seen it.

But if you bought a sex toy for her and she likes it, why not go ahead and admit you bought one for yourself and you like it too?

Especially if you can both enjoy them together and have a better time sexually than you might otherwise.

Also, regardless of where you live, get out of the house and do something, anything.

Everyone will go insane if they stay inside long enough.

“This might be a weird question, but how do you deal with people (mostly on social media) who call you racist/say you’re just pandering to the conservative base? I’ve been seeing more and more blue checkmarks who tweet at you things like this, or just reference you without tagging you.

I fall into the category of people who did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 but will be in 2020 due to the mockery and wild generalizations that moderates like myself have been put into. Hope this makes some semblance of sense.”

Simple: I don’t worry about people who don’t know me and say things about me that aren’t true.

Look, would I be upset if someone said I was a big fat idiot online? Of course not. Because I’m not fat and I’m not an idiot.

So why would I care if someone says I’m a racist/sexist/insert -ist here and am lying to my audience all day?

Here’s the reality, I do three hours of daily radio and an hour of TV/online video, and write thousands of words a week. I would have to be the best actor ever to pretend to be something I’m not all day every day.

Newsflash: I’m an awful actor.

I’m just me.

For better or worse what you see and hear every day is me. I don’t sound much different when the camera isn’t running in my house. In fact, ask my wife, I say the same things all day long to her.

I’ve said this in many mailbags in the past, but I think it’s an important life lesson for all to grasp. As a general rule, people don’t say bad things about people less successful than they are.

I’m more successful than almost every single one of my critics.

And you probably are too.

So why care what those people are saying?

As Outkick continues to exponentially grow the number of blue checkmark brigade members out there chirping away at me will probably grow.

But not as fast as our audience will be growing.

“So Ohio State, Iowa, Nebraska voted to play Big Ten sports and the rest didn’t.

All three states have Republican governors.

Almost every other state in the Big 10 has a Democrat as governor – including very competitive PA, MI, WI and MN. Looks like you were right – this is about beating Trump more than safety.

As a Big 10 fan, please keep on this. There’s still time to pressure these schools to start, maybe in October. It’s time for alumni and fans to start threatening to withhold donations and to target these governors, who might want to be re-elected at some point.”

I just stopped writing the anonymous mailbag to write about the president calling Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren to advocate for the return of Big Ten athletics, football in particular, this fall.

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican playing football should not be a partisan issue.

It’s insane to me that the number one predictive factor about whether your kid is allowed to play high school football is whether your governor is a Democrat or a Republican.

That’s absolute balderdash.

The fact that I’ve somehow become the biggest advocate for Big Ten football being played in the entire country is just a perfect sign of how upside down the world has become.

…

Okay, I’ve got to get ready for my Facebook/Periscope show and Fox Bet Live.

Thanks for reading the anonymous mailbag.

As always, send your anonymous mailbag questions to clay.travis@gmail.com, anonymity guaranteed.