Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday and I know many of you are as bleary-eyed as I am this morning after the Titans win over the Broncos didn’t end until after 1:30 am et.

But have no fear, the Anonymous Mailbag is here to rescue you from your work and school doldrums.

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

And here we go:

“A teacher in California recently got fired for having an Onlyfans account on the side. So I actually have a few questions. What would your reaction be if one of your boys’ teachers was in this situation? How would you explain to your boys what she was doing or give context to why she would make an Onlyfans to begin with? Your older one would probably figure it out but the younger two might not. Would you personally fire a teacher for having an OnlyFans account if given the authority? I know you believe prostitution should be legal, but maybe you’d feel differently given that teachers are dealing with young students every day.”

My boys have had some hot teachers.

So I’d think it was pretty incredible if I found out one of those teachers had an OnlyFans account. (And I imagine a bunch of other dads would too.)

I wouldn’t demand they be fired, but I’d expect the teacher to be fired if this became public knowledge. And I’d think the teacher would have to expect it too.

My first thought, however, is I wonder how they ended up catching the teacher here. Was she marketing her OnlyFans account as a hot teacher or did someone just recognize her online? I think that matters quite a bit here. If she’s using one job, that’s she’s a teacher, to market her second job, that she’s a hot teacher gone wild online, then that’s a pretty clear conflict. It also raises the possibility that some crazy fan could track her down and potentially create a safety issue at the school.

So I can see that angle requiring her to lose her job.

But if she was just doing the second job to help cover the bills for that first job doesn’t, it raises a tough question: At what point does one job infringe upon your ability to do another job, even if the second job you’re doing is completely legal and completely without connection to the other job?

We know many teachers, especially young ones. have second jobs that they might work outside of the teaching hours during the school year or during the summer. Some of those jobs might conflict with the general mores of teaching. For instance, what if a teacher works as a bartender or server when he or she’s not at school? Most of you would probably be okay with that, but if it was a bartender or server at Hooters or Twin Peaks? Probably not as much.

So there’s a balancing act here.

As a general rule, I think porn probably gets you fired no matter what, but I actually find the OnlyFans less objectionable the younger the kids she’s teaching. Why is that? Because those kids aren’t going to seek it out or know about it. A hot kindergarten or first grade teacher is different than a hot high school teacher. The entire high school will know all about the teacher, the elementary school, unless a dad or one of her co-workers finds out, would probably never know.

But I do think every teacher on the planet would know they’d get fired for an OnlyFans account.

I’m not personally offended — and I wouldn’t demand the firing if I found out about it — but the teacher had to know this was likely to happen.

If anything, she’s probably making way more money on the OnlyFans account and getting fired probably got her a ton of publicity — check out the hot teacher! — leading to even more money.

As for what to tell the kids, I think the answer’s easy if they’re young, the teacher got a better job. If the student is in high school, they’ll all know already. Don’t you remember how quickly stories spread in high school? Your kids knew way before you did.

“I appreciate your message last week on Outkick The Show that you would always use the Coronabros term because the Coronabros will always be with us – the people who would rather cancel than DBAP.

Sunday morning my family and I were on the way to church. We live in a state with a mask ordinance and our church encourages masks so we wear them, at least until we get to our seats. Now, keep in mind my kids hear your show on the way to school and at other times around the house so Sunday on the way to church my wife is taking inventory of masks with my kids (5 & 11) and she asks my 5 year old if he has his mask and he says, “I don’t want it because I’m not a Coronabro anymore.”

Thank you for speaking truth, Clay. Your audience is bigger than you think – even the 5 year olds don’t want to be Coronabros!

So I’m a lawyer and I’m dealing with a child custody case in which the father is using the coronavirus as an excuse for not seeing his young child. I called him a “coronabro” in court and the judge totally got it.”

I despise the coronabros, but it’s worth noting here to your kids that I’m not advocating breaking local establishment rules.

Do I think it’s absurd that I have to wear a mask to walk to my table in the restaurant, but then can immediately take it off as soon as I’m seated? Yes, it’s utterly ridiculous. There’s no way that I’m protecting anyone with this behavior. 99% of the time I’m spending in the restaurant I’m without a mask.

What benefit is wearing one to walk to my table providing at all?

I’m in favor of common sense smart decisions being made to protect people from infection, aka not ridiculous choices being made that don’t provide any protection at all.

If you’re flying on an airplane, okay, I don’t have a problem with someone requesting that everyone keep their masks on.

But I think the data is going to pretty clearly show us that most of our response to the coronavirus was cosmetic theater. The virus is going to spread until we reach a level of infection that causes the virus to stop spreading. I think that’s what we saw in the northeast and what we’ve now seen in Florida and Arizona. At some point the virus just ceases to spread because around 20% of the population has been exposed I believe the herd immunity threshold is much lower than we were initially told.

Just look at what happened in Sweden.

They did nothing and everything has been fine in their country for months.

Anyway, I’d tell your kids to do the same thing I tell my kids to do, listen to the rules and follow them even if you think they are ridiculous.

For instance, I don’t think elementary school kids need to wear masks in school. I don’t believe the data supports it being necessary at all. But I’m willing for my kids to wear a mask if it means they get to attend school in person, which they are all doing.

“I really need your help. My girlfriend decided she wanted to take a “break” after a year of dating.

A little background, we have been long distance since I moved to NC and she was finishing law school in Florida. With the craziness of Covid, the FL bar has now been postponed twice. This has caused her job start date to be pushed back, and she now has to move back in with her parents. She had been with me in North Carolina for nearly 2 awesome weeks when she told me this.

Everything was going very well, and we had plans to move to the same city once she started her new job. With a wrench in those plans she has completely melted down. The stress and anxiety of the bar exam caught up with her and caused her to make what I feel was a panicked decision.

My question is what should I do to get things back on track? Our relationship was amazing, and unless something crazy happened, I saw us getting married which we both talked about. I don’t want to lose out on an amazing girl because of stress caused by something completely out of our control.”

It’s possible your girlfriend is making anxiety-ridden decisions because her life plans have been upended. But it’s also possible the coronavirus has given her an opportunity to re-examine her life plans and realize what she had expected isn’t what she still wants. In other words, the virus upending her world might have been the excuse she needed to break things off with you. It’s effectively a get out of a relationship free card.

It’s impossible to know, in other words, whether this is a panicked decision brought on by anxiety or an opportunity for her to reassess what matters to her.

Which is why I can’t give you perfect advice.

I can tell you, however, that every single person on the planet is more desirable when they look like they don’t need to be in a relationship.

Even if it’s a total lie right now, I’d counsel living your life while pretending to have fun and ignoring her for the next couple of weeks. Yes, I know, you’re obsessively checking her social media feeds in the meantime. And you’re obsessively thinking: what if she really is the love of my life and she goes elsewhere?!

Here’s the deal, and I know this is hard to hear given your youth, but everyone has many, many people they could happily marry. If this girl doesn’t work out for you, someone else will.

I know that’s hard to hear when you’re young and in your teens or twenties, but most of a relationship working out is two people deciding they want to be together and they’re willing to figure out a way to make it happen. Right now your ex-girlfriend, the woman you thought you were going to marry, doesn’t want to be with you. And you didn’t do anything, that you know of at least, to make that happen.

That means, as difficult as it may be to hear, there’s nothing you can do to make her like you again.

That sucks, but, trust me, disinterest is the best play you’ve got. (Even if it’s the hardest one to pull off). If you really want her back, pretend you don’t and wait for her to have regrets. It’s your best (and only) move now.

“Need your help here. I live in a small apartment in Ohio. Once you come in the exterior door my door is to your immediate left, there are stairs straight ahead and then there is a studio apartment off to the right. So, my door faces the door two this studio apartment.

Last weekend this new guy moves in. He doesn’t work and just sits at home all day drinking. For some strange reason, he leaves his door wide open. The inside of his apartment is a wreck. There’s a mattress in the corner and a chair upside down neither of which he uses. He just passes out on the floor with his door wide open.

So, my natural reaction is I’ll just approach this guy nicely and ask him to shut his door. Well, last night around 3AM I noticed his door was still open and he was passed out. So, I figured maybe this is my chance to approach him nicely. This complex had a problem in the past where drifters had been using the common laundry area to shoot up drugs.

So, I stand in his doorway and knock to wake him up. I’m like, “Hey, I noticed your door was open, just wanted to let you know we’ve had issues in the past. Just looking out for you.” He immediately says, why does everyone keep saying that? and then reaches under the upside-down chair and pulls out a revolver and says, I’m not worried about anyone coming in here. He never pointed the gun at me or threatened me and he’s probably right that he has absolutely nothing worth stealing.

So, now I’m kind of stuck here. What is my next move? I can’t think of any law that makes it illegal to leave your front door open (other than maybe fire code?). It also probably isn’t illegal for him to possess a gun in his own home (unless he’s a felon or something), though it might be illegal to have a loaded gun lying next to you while passed out drunk.

I feel like I tried the reasonable, neighborly, approach and that got me nowhere. I could call the landlord but what exactly can he even do? Calling the cops would be the absolute nuclear option but it is questionable what they could do unless he actually threatens someone with the weapon. Plus, do I really want to start a dispute with my alcoholic neighbor who sleeps with a loaded revolver next to him?”

You definitely don’t want to start a dispute with the drunk guy who keeps a loaded gun in his apartment. So calling the police is off the table. Especially because he’s not doing anything illegal.

But I do think this is a conversation you should have with the landlord. It’s (potentially) very dangerous for a drunk guy to keep his door open and a loaded gun with him at all times.

The problem you have is you’ve already had a conversation with your neighbor about the issue, meaning he’s likely to know it was you who went to the landlord in the event a conversation between the two of them eventually happens.

So I think you have to wait now until there’s another incident, which you don’t discuss with him directly, about his behavior. Or you need to make something up and call your landlord.

In the meantime, I don’t think it’s crazy for you to be a bit apprehensive coming back late at night to your apartment. You’ve got a guy who gets drunk all day, leaves his door open, and keeps a loaded gun in his apartment. He could easily see someone and drunkenly overreact and fire the weapon. That could happen either to you, to someone visiting you, or to anyone else entering the apartment complex, whether it be the pizza guy or another resident.

Which is why I think you have to raise it as an issue with the landlord.

But in a way that hopefully doesn’t make it clear you were the one who raised the issue.

Another easy option here, by the way? How about moving to a better place?

Good luck.

“Got a chance to read your anonymous mailbag finally, and in response to the two letters from guys in fantasy football leagues that are going down because of the social justice movement – their experience only shows the tip of the iceberg. I work as a college football official (Division III) and the number of people involved with the sport who are leaving is huge. Not just fans, but support staff, officials, game-day personnel, etc. At all levels (high school, college, pro) people are fed up with a few loudmouthed people taking the reins and turning football into a social justice platform. Six of my officiating colleagues alone have indicated that they will not return to officiating college football for that reason alone – that they are expected to not only do their job on the field, but support these woke movements off the field as well. I have not decided to leave officiating yet, because I believe the sport and our avocation of officiating will outlast these grifters. It’s still sad and aggravating to see, because many of my colleagues enjoy officiating for the same reason people enjoy watching sports – it’s a respite from the stupidity of the outside world on a regular basis.”

90% of sports fans consume sports to escape from the real world.

It doesn’t surprise me at all, unfortunately, that many officials, who mostly do the job for fun, would be less inclined to do the job going forward given the social justice wave overwhelming college athletics.

I tend to think that as soon as this election is over we’ll have another four year absence of social justice activism.

“I’m a healthy person, but have a legitimate medical condition which makes mask wearing a masks a no-go. But this theater chain is saying they can’t make exceptions because they want to “keep people safe.” I’m not denying their right to exclude anyone. But given how the theater industry was shuttered for months and lost money, why would they be so rigid?

I actually posted about it on the company Facebook page, that’s how I know they won’t budge. And it just seems absurd they’d be so married to the cult of the mask they wouldn’t use any common sense to realize that there are people who could make them money, people who are healthy, but just can’t deal with masks.

The other two theatre chains are also requiring masks. And I’m not about to waste a trip trying to go, not getting admitted, all because I can’t be a part of the mask cult.”

I have no idea what health condition you could have that doesn’t allow you to wear a mask, but here’s the reality: if you buy a popcorn and a drink, as soon as you sit down you can take your mask off and nurse the popcorn and the drink for the entirety of the movie.

I went to the movies with my wife and kids for three straight weeks recently.

No one walked around to check that we had our masks on and for much of the movie it was impossible to do so because we were eating popcorn and drinking our drinks.

That means you can wear your mask for five minutes, buy popcorn and a drink, sit down, and pull your mask off and enjoy the movie.

It seems to me that many people are looking for reasons to be upset as opposed to just recognizing that the rules in places aren’t actually that limiting.

Every movie theater requires that you wear shirt and shoes to enter. So do most restaurants. A mask in a restaurant or movie theater is far less impactful, from a wardrobe perspective, than either of those requirements.

If you want to go watch a movie and don’t want to wear a mask during the movie, all you have to do to avoid this requirement is buy food and drink inside.

Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.

You can follow the rules and still watch the movie in comfort.

…

Thanks for reading.

As always send your anonymous mailbag questions to claytravis@gmail.com, anonymity