Jack’s Answers

1. Is there someone in your life you know you’d be better off without? Not anymore. I recently wrote off a few extended family members for whom I no longer have any use. This is not to say that someone must actively prove their worth for me to associate with them; I’m actually pretty easygoing and don’t expect shameless flattery, garish displays of wealth or miracles from either friends or family. The only requirements are that you not attempt to harm us in any way, that you refrain from violating our trust, and that you act in a manner befitting a civilized human being of your age. As these individuals range from merely immature and insufferable to devious and malicious, I no longer have use nor room for them in my life. I’m a big proponent of discarding the useless and unwanted in order to make room for the valued, especially when it comes to negative influences; when my friends complain to me about people in their lives who continually make them miserable, I tell them that there’s no reason to keep a friend or even a blood relation in their lives if they take without bringing anything good to the table. With these particular family members I realized that I had to take my own advice. I am much happier.

2. Do you get criticized because of your body? Not really, or at least not anymore. When I was a kid I got teased quite a bit by my peers because of my height; in elementary school I was always one of the shortest kids in my class. This meant being one of the last kids picked for sports, but it also meant compensating for this perceived failing by always trying hard, possibly harder than I would have otherwise. I stopped getting teased around the same time that the teasing stopped bothering me. Fortunately, the drive to work hard and succeed never left me. These days, I’m still probably below-average when it comes to height, but I’m not self-conscious about it; nobody gives me any shit about it and I can’t imagine it would wreck my confidence if they did. The only person who criticizes me about my body is myself, as I could stand to lose a few pounds but I like food and drink way too much. Fortunately, my own criticism drives me to work out, run when I can, and even eat healthy once in a very great while.

3. Did you kiss the last person you called? The last person I called was a client, and since I’m not a male escort (sorry, ladies!) I don’t make a habit of kissing the people I work for. I have a couple attractive female clients I wouldn’t mind kissing, but I’m guessing that their husbands might not take kindly, and such an indiscretion could have a negative effect on my income.

4. When was the last time you danced?Recently, while encouraging my young daughter to do the same.

5. Do you keep in mind other people’s feelings? I was raised to be considerate and I do my best to never willingly tread on someone’s feelings. However, it’s difficult to successfully walk the line between being considerate of another person’s feelings and letting someone mistreat you because they know you’re a decent person. So I try to be mindful of myself first, and other people next. Which is, of course, what any well-adjusted person ought to do.

6. If you have a hang nail, do you pull it or clip it? Pull it.

7. Who do you want to forget? Five or six months ago I would have said Donald Trump, but he’s kept a low profile since bowing out of the 2012 presidential race and I have almost completely forgotten about him and his shitty hairdo. This week, in light of her completely expected exit from the race, I’ll say Sarah Palin. I hope that the general apathy with which her announcement was met is an indication that even her own followers are as sick of her as the rest of us most certainly are. In the next month or two I’d like to be able to completely forget about Michele Bachmann, as well as Marcus and his passive-aggressive self-hatred and bigotry. After that, hopefully Rick Santorum will follow; no one expects him to be anything beyond a punchline anyway. And although I’m no fan of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry, the thought of either of these two becoming president merely upsets me. It doesn’t make me weep for all mankind.

8. Who was the last person to send you a letter? A letter? As in a piece of personal correspondence (i.e. not a utility or credit card bill) which is physical in nature (i.e. not an e-mail) but is not a greeting card? Something that begins with “Dear [name]”, includes a few lines of text and closes with “Sincerely, [name]”, “Love, [name]”, “Fondly, [name]” or some similar sentiment? I have literally no idea. I would guess that it has been a decade or more since I received an actual letter in the mail. The identity of the sender is certainly lost to time. My Mom? I’m gonna say my Mom, because why not. Edit: Jill points out that, when we first started dating, she used to send me letters all the time. I still have them, so I should have known better.

9. Who did you last tell to shut up? I’m guessing some political pundit on television. I really don’t know if this is the case, but it seems likely.

10. What’s the last thing that you smelt that smelt bad? Gasoline. Not a big fan of that particular odor.

11. What’s your favorite cereal? Lucky Charms. Hell, I’ll even eat the generic equivalent. I don’t care if there’s no leprechaun on the box and no toy surprise inside. Oats and colorful little marshmallow pieces? Suddenly I’m ten years old again. If I can eat it while watching Saturday morning cartoons – and thanks to Cartoon Network I can watch the cartoons of my youth whether I’m eating Lucky Charms for breakfast or as a just-before-bed snack – life is truly perfect.

13. Could you live without sunlight? No, I’m not a vampire. However, the non-stop overcast skies that I’m used to in the late fall and winter may be, because they suck. I can’t imagine living without blue skies and sunshine. I can do it, and I have put up with it for months at a time, but it gets to me. Long periods of overcast skies without sunlight, with or without rain, tend to put me in a funk. I can deal with a couple days at a time, but once we hit the five-day mark, I’m aching to see the sun. If we reach two straight weeks, I’m seriously bummed. If I experience more than a month with no sunlight because the cloud cover is way too heavy, I’m pretty close to despondent. By this point, a sun lamp, hula music and tropical drinks are the only things keeping me from bouncing off the walls.

14. What’s something you know is bad, but you want to do it anyway? Invent some sort of invisibility serum (which may cause permanent insanity), ingest it, and use it to enter the women’s locker room at the gym.

15. What was the last thing you lied about? See question #8. I’m about as certain as I can be that the last letter I received wasn’t from my Mom. Edit: Now that I know Jill probably sent me my last letter, I’ll just go ahead and say I’ve never lied. THERE! That’s a lie. Question successfully answered.

16. Do you regret anything you’ve done in the past week? No. I try not to have many regrets, as there’s no point, really; everybody does things they might regret: They let opportunities pass them by. They say something and later wish they had said something different. They drink to excess. They don’t realize until they’ve dropped their date off that they’ve got spinach between their front teeth. They make mistakes. They are human. As I said, I try not to dwell on the past or obsess over things that I might have done differently. I acknowledge these incidents and do my best to move on. Most of the things I do aren’t the sort of things that leave me wracked with guilt and self-doubt. If I, say, cheated a senior citizen out of a few thousand dollars – something certainly worth feeling guilty over – I doubt that I would be the sort of person who would regret it afterwards anyway.

17. What was the last movie you bought? I haven’t bought a movie in years. Rather than once again lying, I’m just going to say I don’t know.

18. What is a sport you would like to do? Basketball. (See question #2)

19. When was the last time you felt like crying? Upon learning of a tragic and untimely death in the family. I probably did cry, in fact.

20. Have you ever wanted to kill someone (not that you actually do it)? Not really. I’ve said I wanted to kill someone (not to their face, of course) as it’s a decent means of letting off steam. But that’s different than really wanting to kill them (and way different than actually doing it). I try not to lose my temper, though I have my limits. But I’m not a particularly violent guy. That said, if I absolutely had to because my life or the lives of my loved ones were in danger, I’d like to think that I would do whatever was necessary to protect us. But that most certainly doesn’t mean I would do it with any joy or enthusiasm; while I might want to kill them more than I want to die, I wouldn’t like the fact that the person put me in this position. But killing someone because they scratched my fender, wore the throwback of an opposing quarterback or cut me off in traffic? No, that’s not me at all.

Jill’s Answers

1. Is there someone in your life you know you’d be better off without? I don’t think so. I have a friend who is extremely irritating and needy. She is the reason the expression “pain in the ass” was coined. Despite the fact that I am a wife and mother who works full-time and tries to incorporate sex into my already-crowded schedule, this friend calls me frequently and attempts to monopolize my after-work time. It is very difficult to politely tell this person that, after a long, hard day, the first two people I want to spend time with are my husband and our child, and she isn’t even in the top ten. My life would be so much easier if I didn’t know this person, but she is not mean-spirited or actively trying to hurt us, so no, I don’t believe that I am better off without her in my life.

2. Do you get criticized because of your body? Not openly. If anyone is criticizing me, they’re doing it behind my back.

3. Did you kiss the last person you called? The last person I called was Jack. I have kissed him. The person before that was my mom. I have kissed her. Looking at my call history on my cell phone, the last call I made to someone who I’ve never kissed was on September 26th. I called Comcast to schedule cable installation. But who knows? Maybe the Comcast guy was an ex-boyfriend.

4. When was the last time you danced? I danced with our daughter today! She’s got rhythm.

5. Do you keep in mind other people’s feelings? I always do. In fact, I think I consider other people’s feelings to a fault, meaning that I sometimes try to please the people in my life at my own expense. Coming from a large family in which I was one of the eldest children, I got used to doing things for everyone else, and this has carried over to my adult life. Jack has tried to help me put my needs above the needs of others, but it hasn’t been easy. As they say, old habits die hard. Still, I’m trying, and I think I’m better about it than I used to be.

6. If you have a hang nail, do you pull it or clip it? Clip.

7. Who do you want to forget? I want to forget about people who have hurt me and those I love, such as ex-boyfriends who treated me poorly, and negative people who tried to drag me down to their level.

8. Who was the last person to send you a letter? I have no idea! In college I used to send and receive a lot of letters, twenty or thirty at a time! I used to write to old high school friends, family members I missed, and even new acquaintances and friends who lived close. But that was before e-mail. I think the letter is sadly obsolete.

9. Who did you last tell to shut up? I don’t normally tell people to shut up. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t want to.

10. What’s the last thing that you smelt that smelt bad? A container of mystery food that I encountered in the back of the refrigerator while cleaning it.

11. What’s your favorite cereal? Either Cap’n Crunch or Fruity Pebbles. I can’t choose one over the other. Also, unlike Jack, I do not want to eat the generic equivalents. They taste different, and I will gladly pay more for the name brand.

12. How do you feel when people lead you on, but they don’t even like you? I think it’s pretty shitty, and I feel hurt when it happens. It normally means they’re using me to get something from me. They’re lying, and I hate being lied to.

13. Could you live without sunlight? No. First of all, I need the vitamin D from the sun. Second of all, sunlight makes me happy. If I only had gray skies, I would be sad.

14. What’s something you know is bad, but you want to do it anyway? Sex in public. This is a big turn-on for me, and I love doing it. But the fact that it’s public means we run the risk of being caught, and being caught means possible arrest or public embarrassment, so we don’t do this very much, and generally only when there’s little risk of being caught, or at the very least when the thrill vastly outweighs the risk.

15. What was the last thing you lied about? I was having an instant messenger conversation with the irritating and needy friend I described above. She had popped up to ask me something, I answered her question, and then I got up from the computer assuming the conversation was over. She then popped up on Jack’s instant messenger and asked if I was through talking to her, as apparently she had more to say and continued IMing me after I was gone. When I returned to the computer I told her that I was checking on the baby, when what I should have said was, “I thought I answered your question, and besides, I don’t really like talking to you.” See what I mean about being considerate?

16. Do you regret anything you’ve done in the past week? I regret buying into someone else’s drama, which resulted in three days of having to deal with it. I could have just ignored it, and I would have had a much less stressful week. Because, as I said, I tend to be overly conscious of other people’s feelings, ignoring others isn’t always easy, and I have to deal with the repercussions of the choices I make. I also kind of wish I hadn’t accepted a dinner invitation from the person I described in the first question. But she had been asking to get together for so long, and I finally just gave in to shut her up. Hey, I just thought of something. If I actually told her to shut up, I could be rid of this person, and have an answer for question #9.

17. What was the last movie you bought? The last DVD I bought was P.S. I Love You, which I purchased for somebody as a gift.

18. What is a sport you would like to do? I would like to learn to play golf, but not enough to invest the necessary time and money.

19. When was the last time you felt like crying? I actually cried recently, when I came home late from work and found the baby had fallen asleep before I could see her.

20. Have you ever wanted to kill someone (not that you actually do it)? There are many people in my life who irritate me enough that I want to kill them, though I would never actually do it. Then again, after reading Jack’s answer, I should probably say for the record that I don’t actually want to kill anyone, but sometimes I like saying that I do.