Time for a return for 'Dear Dad' to provide important advice

Nobody gives advice like a dad. Disagree? Consider Atticus Finch, Mike Brady, Heathcliff Huxtable, and John Walton. But ignore Homer Simpson, Phil Dunphy, Al Bundy and Peter Griffin.

As we commemorate another Father's Day, it's time for an annual tradition that is as beloved as wishing dad "Happy Father's Day" and then forgetting about it: Allowing a dad to take over this column.

In the spirit of Dear Abby, Dear Prudence, Miss Manners and more, it's time for Dear Dad, a column that features made-up questions from made-up readers for a made-up advice columnist.

The advice, however, is solid. Read on.

Dear Dad:

My husband and I divorced eight years ago. We share custody of our two children and it has been fairly amicable over the years. However, my children have told me things that have me concerned. They say my ex-husband seems very focused on gambling and constantly uses one of those betting apps on his phone. They say he watches more sports than he used to and talks a lot about "parlays" and "prop bets" and "futures." I don't receive alimony or child support from him, so this isn't about me needing his money. But I still care about him and he remains my children's father. Should I do anything?

Uneasy in Fairfield

Dear Uneasy: One of life's most important lessons is that you can't fix someone who doesn't want to be fixed. Unless it's a dog or cat, I guess, but that's a different issue.

It's like when my 1990 Honda Accord was running rough and I didn't want to pay a mechanic to fix it. This was before YouTube – before the Internet, really – so I relied on my friend Troy to help. He said it was probably the carburetor, so we checked the vacuum lines to see if they were dry-rotted or disconnected and pinched them off to see if that affected how the engine idled. There was nothing wrong, so we sprayed some carburetor cleaner into the jets. Again, nothing. So we looked at the fuel pump. That was the problem – a bad fuel pump relay was starving the carburetor of fuel. I went down to Pep Boys and bought a replacement. It worked great and taught me a good lesson – sometimes when the carburetor is running badly, the problem might be somewhere else.

Glad I could help.

Dear Dad:

I work at a large local company and sometimes at social events I'll see co-workers. Recently, I was at a graduation barbecue in Suisun City for a friend's son and one of the guests was a supervisor from work. He didn't see me, but he ended up drinking too much and started talking about how "layoffs are coming" at work and how he's part of the group who will determine who gets let go. Should I warn my co-workers? I don't think the supervisor would have said anything if he knew I was there. I welcome your advice.

Concerned in Cordelia

Dear Concerned:

Sorry to hear about that situation. I can't help but notice you mentioned a barbecue. One thing you should always keep in mind when barbecuing meat is to not take the meat out of the fridge and put it directly on the grill. When I barbecue steak, I usually let it sit at room temperature for at least a half-hour. I just put it on a plate on the kitchen counter, so I won't forget it.

A lot of people put too much seasoning the meat. I'm a fan of using just salt and pepper – both generously. And remember to cook the meat over the hottest part of the grill and only for two or three minutes per side. After that, you can tent it loosely with aluminum foil for five or 10 minutes.

I hope that they cooked the meat well at your friend's barbecue.

Dear Dad: I'm concerned about my daughter. She's just finished her sophomore year at Vanden High School and said she's talking with a boy. I thought that meant they were talking, but a friend told me that when teenagers say that now, it means they're actually dating. Could that be true? I don't know whether to ask her about it or if it really means she's literally just talking. What should I do?

Confused at Travis

Dear Confused: Boy times have changed, haven't they? Back when I was in high school, we just said we had a girlfriend or that we were dating someone. We didn't have all these terms that are confusing.

It reminds me of how baseball has changed. It used to be that the best hitters were determined by easy-to-understand numbers. If you hit .300, you were a good hitter. If you hit 30 homers, you were a power hitter. If you drove in 100 runs, you were clutch. Same with pitchers. Guys who won 20 games and had an ERA of 3.00 or below were the best pitchers. Now we have OPS and WAR and FIP and BABIP. People talk about launch angle and bat speed and exit velocity. The statistics guys took something that worked well for more than 100 years and changed it so it requires a slide rule and special handbook to know what works. You know what really works? A three-run homer and seven good innings out of your starting pitcher. Give me Greg Maddux and Tony Gwynn any day over these guys who hit .220 and are considered valuable.

I hope I've helped.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Past, present or future? When we want to live reveals what we believe

If I lived in 1926 or 1826 or earlier, I would be a visionary lunatic, talking about electric cars and smartphones and the Internet and food delivery services and daily showers.

I'd also be dead quickly since I'm a Type 1 diabetic and insulin wasn't invented until 1921.

But it's not just the obvious shortcoming. In a time-travel scenario, I would be absolutely useless in describing how the internet works or what satellites are or how to make a refrigerator. I couldn't tell anyone how microwave ovens work or how we can be vaccinated against smallpox or how televisions somehow capture pictures being "transmitted" from somewhere distant and show up on a box in our houses.

Meanwhile, I'd be totally unprepared to be a farmer or work in a factory. My college education would be no help in working a wood-burning oven or washing clothes without a Maytag.

Yeah, I'd be terrible in the past. Maybe you would be, too (although I suspect you know more about how things work than I do. Other than "unplug it, count to 10 and plug it back in," I don't know how to fix things).

Would you want to live in the past? To exist in what's perceived as a simpler, less busy, more friendly time, when neighbors knew each other and we didn't have a million things competing for our attention. By that, I mean we were less "busy" because it took 10 hours a day to maintain a house and most jobs required six days a week, 10 hours a day (unless you were a farmer, when it was seven days a week, 12 hours a day). When we didn't have a million things competing for our attention because we were trying to survive simple infections.

Apparently, many Americans would prefer to live in the past: According to a YouGov poll from last year, 45% of Americans would prefer to live in the past, with 25% preferring sometime in the past 50 years (perhaps the 1980s, when cocaine fueled America and Joey Buttafuoco was a celebrity? Perhaps the 1990s, when we all were watching the O.J. Simpson trial?). Another 20% would prefer anytime before 1976 (maybe 1919, when nearly 1% of Americans died of the Spanish flu and the Ku Klux Klan was running large parts of the country? Maybe 1776, when the American Revolution began and the average life span was 38 years? Maybe 1224, when most people took a couple of baths a year?).

When asked, people have misty, water-colored memories (from "The Way We Were," a song from more than 50 years ago) of the past. 

The key point highlighted by the authors of an article on the survey is that far more people would chose to live in the past than the future, with just 14% of people saying they'd like to live in the future. Another 40% said they like the present.

When broken down by demographics, far more Republicans and white people prefer the past – particularly the more distant past. Surprisingly to me, as many women wish to live in the past as do men, suggesting they're more familiar with the "Little House on the Prairie" books than the fact that women couldn't get a house mortgage without a male co-signer until 1974.

My suspicion is that popular media dramatically influences how we view the past and future. Many movies about the past romanticize life – when honor was above all, when families were close, when romance was real, when people were patriotic and passionate and willing to sacrifice. Hollywood doesn't make many movies about dreary lives of people who lived their entire 35-year existent on a remote farm, working to survive with a spouse who was their only option and then dying of consumption.

Meanwhile, futuristic movies, books and TV shows involve all-controlling entities forcing people to wear monochromatic uniforms and being oppressed with very little chance to break from the enforced conformity. We want to live in the times of "Outlander," not in the times of "Soylent Green" (Wait. I just checked and "Soylent Green" is set in 2022. What? But I stand by my point).

I'm risk-averse. Given the choice, I definitely don't want to go to the past (where I would be the inept, confused, pathetic dying diabetic) and I fear the future (with AI programs dictating what we do, while "Everything you think, do and say is in the pill you took today," as it says in the song "In the Year 2525").

I'll take the present, where other people can worry about how smartphones and microwaves work and I can benefit from refrigeration. And I can Google when "Soylent Green" took place.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

FWIW, most-searched acronyms brings confusion to an aging boomer

There was a time when acronyms were primarily reserved for organizations. There was the FBI and CIA. There was the NAACP and the ACLU. There was the NFL and the NBA.

There were a few people who went by initials – JFK, LBJ (the president, not the basketball player), FDR and MLK – but most "acronyms" of names were just the person's first two initials: O.J. Simpson. P.T. Barnum. H.G. Wells. C.S. Lewis.

It was a simpler time. Or a more complicated time? I'm not sure. I just know that in the texting era, we've had an explosion of acronyms (or initialisms. Acronyms are words you can say, like SCUBA or RADAR; initialisms are just initials, like . . . virtually everything I've described as an "acronym" so far. But in popular culture, we call initialisms "acronyms." And in popular culture, we use them occasionally. JK. We actually use them all a lot. LOL. ROTFL).

As an old person, I'm the guy shaking his fist at a cloud as younger co-workers consistently use FWIW and IIRC and IMO, requiring me to Google the phrases or ask them to further explain. Why not just use words?

This is not quite as bad as using only emojis to communicate (another old-man rant), but close. ICYMI, the most recent acronym/initialism that I used means "in case you missed it." In my opinion, IMO is a silly way to say, "I think." But if I remember correctly, people use IIRC to avoid doing research and for what it's worth, FWIW is a way to express an opinion without accountability.

Unscramblerer.com, a website that ... unscrambles things? ... recently released a list of the most-searched acronyms, both by state and for the nation. I got the California list, but I presume that if I lived in Mississippi, I'd get that state's list. FWIW, I'd never live there. LOL. ROTFL.

When looking at the list, the first thing that jumps out at you is the number of obscene phrases that have acronyms. I knew some of them (I know that WTF doesn't stand for Wednesday-Thursday-Friday), but many obscene acronyms were new to me. And frankly, I wouldn't really be able to guess many of them.

Others seem silly, acronyms/initialisms for phrases that I'd never say in real life. For instance, the most-searched acronym in California is OTP, which means . . . one true pairing.

What?

Who says that? Is that about finding a soul mate? Is it about matching wine with the meal? Is it about Steph Curry and Draymond Green? IDK . . . which is either I don't know or John F. Kennedy's secret brother Issac Donald Kennedy.

Other acronyms for phrases that aren't said (which brings their prominence into question) are WYLL ("what you look like?" which irritates me because it sounds like a caveman), FS ("for sure") and ATP ("at this point," although it's also the "Association of Tennis Professionals." )

Ultimately, I've probably contributed to the list circulated by unscramblerer (important note: It's unscramblerer, with the extra "er" on the end. I don't know why, or simply IDK why), since the list is the most popular Google search terms. In other words (IOW?), the most common acronyms–LOL, FTW, OMG, TBH–are widely known and people don't need to do searches. So people like me (those ranting that the world was better when we used full words, watched 13-inch TVs, ate canned vegetables and believed that menthol cigarettes were good for our throats) are consistently looking up acronyms to understand what our co-workers, children or grandchildren mean.

FWIW, I often refuse to look them up, too. At work, I will simple instant message back, "I don't know what that means," to my colleagues, requiring them to reply with the correct words and then to complain to whomever is near them that the old man at the office doesn't know what TFW means (joke's on them! I know it means the airport near Tallas, Texas: TFW because it's for both Tallas and Fort Worth!).

IDK what to do with this info, but FWIW, it doesn't really matter.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.