Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for me to solve all the world’s problems.

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

And go get signed up to gamble if you live in Tennessee, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, West Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, Pennsylvania or New Jersey. You can get up to a $1000 no-risk wager, meaning you can’t lose, for your first bet.

Okay, here we go:

“I’ve got a friend situation that needs some help. My friend is in a new relationship with a girl. Problem is, she is from a whole other country while he is here in the states. They haven’t even met in person, they talk everyday through zoom.

He says he really likes her and has been talking to her for a few months now (albeit through Google translate, she doesn’t speak English well). He says she is everything he is looking for in a wife, and has talked about marrying her.

I don’t want to tell him how to live his life, because he told me his other friends/family have been trying to do that in this situation, but I don’t think this is a good situation. She told him he couldn’t go out and drink with us, and seems to get upset over petty things (part of that is from the language barrier). I also know that this isn’t a scam because my friend has no money and she hasn’t asked him for any, so that’s the lone bright spot here.

He’s talking about going to see her over the summer and possibly even asking her to marry him while he’s there – the first time they will have met in person. What do you think? Am I overreacting/overprotecting my friend here from making a huge mistake, or should I say something to him? If so, how do I go about it without losing one of my best friends?”

This sounds like an episode of 90 Day Fiancé, which my wife and her girlfriends all watch. And I’ll admit, the show is incredibly addictive. I work from home, so when it’s on and I’m walking through the room, I inevitably get sucked in for ten or fifteen minutes.

The first question I have is, how did he meet a girl online who doesn’t speak English? Because, in my experience, it would be pretty hard to stumble into this situation. That’s incredibly important in analyzing the motivations of both parties here.

I don’t know what country this girl is from, but what you’re failing to realize — and what your friend is failing to realize too — is how desperate many women and men are to move to the United States. So while your friend “doesn’t have any money,” he’s insanely wealthy compared to what 90% of the rest of the world’s people live like and that’s likely a huge part of her attraction to him.

Seriously, I don’t think your average American realizes how wealthy we are compared to the standard of living in the rest of the world. The poorest people in America are rich compared to the average person in most of the rest of the world.

So I don’t think you can underrate his comparative wealth — and American citizenship — being a strong driver to her motivations here. She hasn’t asked for money yet because money is a small part of the game she’s playing. She wants citizenship, I’d bet.

Plus, think about this relationship from her perspective. You and your friends all think it’s crazy that your buddy is talking about marrying this foreign girl, but what would her friends or family think? She’s scored an American boyfriend who wants to move her to his country and marry her? She’s outkicking her coverage here in a major way, not him.

Furthermore, and I’m not trying to paint with too broad of a brush here, but is your friend really saying it’s impossible to find a girl he likes in all of America? Yet he miraculously finds the girl of his dreams — who doesn’t even speak English — somewhere online and now he’s going to spend the rest of his life with her? I’m intensely skeptical of anyone claiming that’s the case for any reason.

Especially since he really has no idea what this girl is like. She may be a skilled actress who is picking up on the things he likes in an effort to convince him she’s the girl of his dreams because she wants to come to America.

If I had to guess, I’d bet this girl is way better looking than any girl that he’s dated before and he’s emotionally insecure and awkward with women, which is why he’s making girlfriends online. This girl knows both of these things and is exploiting his insecurities to potentially move to America. Heck, she may well be engaged in multiple simultaneous online relationships with American men to see which one offers her the best ticket to our country. (Again, how did they meet?)

The challenge here is this girl is probably skilled at manipulation. (After all, she’s somehow gotten him to fall in puppy love with her online, despite not even speaking English.) Now she’s judging him for the decisions he’s making and subtly altering his behavior even without her being present. This is all set up for her to dominate the relationship and get what she wants.

I don’t see this relationship ending well, but the question is, how can you make him see this too? Unfortunately, you can’t. Because right now every time someone attacks his relationship, that leads him to cling to her tighter. (This is often the case with bad relationships. The couple can cling together tighter as everyone outside argues they need to break up. That is, the paradoxical impact of your pointing out how toxic their relationship is has the impact of drawing those in a toxic relationship even closer together.)

I don’t think there’s really much you can do here, other than try to find an American girl to distract him from his computer love affair.

And given how socially awkward this guy likely is with girls, that doesn’t seem very likely, unfortunately.

“My question is whether there’s still a legacy in a family name. I have both a small immediate and extended family. Over the past two generations several of my relatives opted not to have children. Now I’m essentially the last male left who could still have kids and pass on the family name.

Thing is, I have no interest in a family of my own. I’m only 31 so there’s plenty of time, but over the past decade I’ve only become more and more entrenched in my lifestyle each year. I just don’t see anything suddenly changing.

My grandfather was a first generation American and carved out a life here. My father took that life and built a multi-million dollar company. I’m on a path to lead a successful life of my own, but it does eat at me that all that came before me could in a way die with me. What are your thoughts on this?”

I think the question you’re asking, at a relatively young age, I might add, is what do you want your legacy to be? For many people, the answer is that their legacy, as well as their family’s legacy, lives on through their children. You’re questioning whether that still matters.

For many people, the answer is yes. But just because it’s true for many people doesn’t mean it has to be true for you.

You say you’re on a path to live a successful life. That’s great. But if you never marry or have children, what happens when you die? Where does your estate, to the extent it exists, go? And what’s your motivation to leave something better behind? In other words, what’s your legacy? What’s the product of your life’s work when you’re no longer here?

Children are just one way to leave a legacy. But there are certainly other very important ways to leave behind a legacy.

You could donate all your money to scholarships at a university you admire, you could found a company that continues to exist and employ people after you’re gone, you could make a large donation to a religious institution that matters, write a book featuring your life’s lessons or mentor others in your community to make their lives better. Or you could decide none of that matters to you and just pursue pleasure in a purely hedonistic lifestyle until you die. Your legacy then would be that you made the world a bit happier and didn’t make it worse when you left.

You could even decide the world is overpopulated and you don’t want to add to the country’s overpopulation so you’re not procreating, which could give you great joy. Again, I can’t claim to answer this question for you and everyone has a different answer.

Certainly there are many people without children who make a tremendous positive impact on the world. But for many of us, myself included, leaving our children — and hopefully our grandchildren — a better world and a better lifestyle than we ourselves had is one of the primary motivations of our life.

And continuing your family’s legacy, via your last name, can be a powerful motivation as well.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to have three boys who will carry on my family’s last name.

My grandfather came down to Nashville from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky to work at DuPont during the Depression. That’s how my family came to Nashville nearly 100 years ago. My grandfather had my dad and my uncle. Each of them had two kids, my uncle had two boys and my dad had me and my sister.

My cousins had two girls between them and my sister has had three kids, two boys and a girl, with her husband.

So this particular wing of the Travis family’s existence was down to me. And I had three boys. So I feel pretty good about our name continuing on into another generation or two, hopefully. That matters to me, sure.

But my mom’s family is also relatively small. My maternal grandfather had two kids, my mom and her brother. Her brother had one child and it doesn’t look like their family name is going to continue there. But I was named after both my grandfathers and I named my first born after both his great-grandfathers. So both of their names are continuing in that way too.

So to me, family names matter..

To others, they don’t.

I’m not saying either one is right or wrong, but I think you need to decide, at some point, maybe not now because you are still fairly young, whether you want kids. And if you don’t, that’s fine, but you need to be upfront about that with everyone you’re dating.

Good luck.

“I’m finally back to school at my super far left wing school in my super far left wing state. The COVID madness is annoying but I’m glad to be back to teaching and to have kids back in school. However, the mask obsession is truly mind boggling to me. I’m in the minority of staff members not ‘double masking.’

I have asked the question if once all us teachers are vaccinated (everyone who wants to be will be by March 20th), do we still have to teach with masks on? I was literally laughed at and told that I clearly don’t listen to the science. When will everyone get past the mask obsession? Could there be a legal battle over mask ‘requirements’ if left wing states keep this going?”

Once you’ve been vaccinated as a teacher, you pose almost zero risk to your students. That’s because kids aren’t primary vectors of COVID transmission, which has been scientifically proven for almost a year now. (It’s also why many schools still being shut down is pure insanity.) The second reason you pose almost no risk is because we’re not even sure if vaccinated people can spread the virus. That is, there’s some measure of uncertainty about whether you could still get the virus post-vaccination and spread the virus to others while being asymptomatic yourself. This is why some people are saying masking will continue for a long time, even after the vaccinations become widespread.

But here’s my question for you: if you’re teaching up in front of the classroom socially distant from your kids — whom, I’m assuming, are all required to wear masks as well — are you going to get fired if you stop wearing a mask to teach? (I can’t imagine it’s easy to speak and be heard while wearing a mask simply because how many times in regular, normal conversation with someone in a mask, have either you or they had to pull down your masks in order to have a conversation? My answer is all the time. For instance, when I’ve been at sporting events with my kids and they’ve leaned over to tell me something, I’ve frequently told them to just pull their mask down and tell me what they’re saying without their masks on.

Here’s another crazy detail: we were told by the NFL that if we traveled to radio row this year for the Super Bowl that RADIO HOSTS WOULD HAVE TO WEAR MASKS WHILE DOING THEIR SHOWS LIVE ON THE AIR. Seriously, this was the rule they put in place.

The moment I heard that requirement, I said we weren’t doing our show on the road.

Can you imagine that absurdity? No one would have been able to hear what I was saying if I had to do a freaking radio show with a mask on.

Similarly, I would think teaching your kids with a mask on is virtually impossible to do well. The kids wearing the masks seems far less distracting from an educational perspective, at least if they aren’t talking a great deal, but the teacher wearing one would seem very detrimental to instruction.

So if I were you, post vaccination, I’d probably make a habit of pulling my mask down during oral instruction in front of the classroom and maybe pulling it back up when I was seated at my desk grading papers or allowing the kids to work on their own.

When I was around my colleagues, in the teacher break room, for instance, I’d wear a mask to avoid drawing attention to the fact that I wasn’t wearing one.

I wouldn’t make a huge show of not wearing a mask while teaching because I think if you did so, you’d draw attention to your behavior and potentially cause a major issue in the school. That is, if you made a huge show for your kids of not respecting the mask rule, one of those kids would talk, either to their parents or another teacher, and eventually the mask police would show up in the classroom.

If any kids ask why you aren’t wearing your mask during instruction, I’d just say you’d gotten some complaints from students about not being able to hear what you’re saying. Hell, if you want to embellish it, you could say several students have hearing issues in your classes and they have privately told you that without seeing your mouth move they are having trouble learning.

Then just leave it at that and hope that sanity is slowing returning to the classrooms.

Hopefully by next school year, all of the madness is gone.

“I’ve been in a 4 year relationship w/my girlfriend (lived together 3 years) and I feel like the relationship is going nowhere. Financially we are good and get along for the most part. She has two kids (17 and 21 year old girls) that stay with us every other week and at their father’s the other days.

My problem is, we are not sexually active, don’t really do anything outside of going to work and taking care of house duties. Her girls are lazy, disrespectful and frankly slobs around the house when here. I’ve tried putting my foot down which leads to huge blow ups and on two occasions me calling the police due to their actions. They have zero discipline in their lives, both refuse to even go to school (online here in New York) and they stay up all night and sleep all day. We are joined due to our house situation and our dog, which I both love, and if I left, I’m not sure how we would resolve that matter. I’m more frustrated than ever at this point. What should I do?”

If you’re staying in a relationship with someone because you like your house and you like the dog, you need to leave the relationship.

Period.

This is an easy call.

Personally, I’d take the dog and let her keep the house. (Obviously if you’ve bought the house together, then you have an ownership stake in the house and that would need to be rectified in some financial way.)

You’re a grown man. There are plenty of places you could live. It’s time to move on.

With the dog.

Also, if you’re calling the police because of your step-daughter’s actions, you’re kind of an asshole yourself so I’m sure they won’t really mind this relationship ending either. (Seriously, what could her daughters have been doing at the house that you had to involve the police? Presumably, they aren’t making meth since they aren’t in jail. So if their behavior wasn’t a dangerous felony, your behavior here was incredibly weird too. If the mom had any sense, she’d have broken up with you for calling the police on her daughters.)

Just based on your calling the police twice, this relationship needs to end today. It’s toxic.

“In light of the fact that the San Francisco Unified School District wants to drop the names of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington from their schools, I feel that their School Board, District Leadership, Teachers and Staff should not observe the upcoming President’s Day Holiday Weekend and come to work on Friday 2/12 and Monday 2/15.

The students of this district should get their deserved days off in observance of President’s Day, but it would be HIGHLY HYPOCRITICAL of the paid employees if they take those days off as well.

Sincerely,

A Freedom Loving Educator in California”

This is an absolutely fantastic argument.

We need to build an entire article around this at OutKick.

Thanks for the idea.

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As always, thanks for reading OutKick. Send your anonymous mailbag questions to claytravis@gmail.com, anonymity guaranteed.