An alert Globe reader alerts us about today's Ask Amy column, specifically, the second question, which reads:
I recently ran into a famous local sports figure at my gym.
I didn’t want to bother him but much to my surprise he approached me. Turns out he knew me from my profession. He asked if I wanted to go out for coffee and we exchanged numbers. A few days later we had coffee and I thought it was pretty cool that he considered us friends.
Then everything changed. He told me he was interested in taking out a woman we ran into. She is my ex-girlfriend and we’ve remained good friends.
He asked me a couple of times if I wouldn’t mind if he asked her out. I reluctantly said no. I made plans with him, and then after talking to my ex I found out that he ditched our plans to go out with her.
The next day he called me and asked if I could help him move some furniture.
I barely know the guy, next thing he will be asking me to drive him to the airport. Two friends of mine warned me not to trust this guy. What’s the deal - am I being too rash or should I dump the guy as a friend?
Columnist Amy Dickinson then provides what is intended to be a helpful answer. Seinfeld fans, of course, realize somebody was trying to put one over Dickinson, because that question is really a basic summary of the two-part Keith Hernandez episode, in which he meets the Mets player in a gym and Hernandez asks him to help him move, which Jerry frets about because it's too early in their male friendship for that, and what would come next, Hernandez asking him for a ride to the airport? Both Kramer and George, of course, warn him not to say yes.
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Comments
Doesn't remember Seinfeld or just trolling?
By anon
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:05pm
I'm going with trolling. And who better to troll than an advice columist?
Maybe ...
By adamg
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:37pm
But you'd think an advice columnist would want to stay on the up and up, as opposed to somebody like, oh, me, back in cub columnist days, when I wrote a weekly reader-question column but kept running into a problem with nobody sending in questions, so I'd have to make them up, then answer them. But I was writing about stuff like whether spuckie rolls were for real, not whether you should break into your boyfriend's phone to see if he's really cheating on you.
Adam, what's the right answer?
By Nancy
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 1:45pm
Do you break into your boyfriend's phone or not? This comes up at least twice a week on a female only message board I frequent. Enquiring minds want to know.
No, of course not
By adamg
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:53pm
You find other evidence that he's cheating and then break things off. And if you can't, break things off, anyway, because the fact that you want to break into his phone shows you two have trust issues and it's not going to work, even if he's not cheating on you. At least, that's what I think I read in yesterday's Globe Magazine advice column, which I sometimes glance at while on my way to Date with Cupid.
See, this is the exact reason
By Patricia
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 3:23pm
See, this is the exact reason why I hate anything remotely related to "female only.."
Women - or anyone, actually think invading someones privacy is OK at anytime?
I'm sorry Nancy, but so many of these things designed for "women only" only prove to me that stereotypes do exist. (Think Laura Petrie and the raft... although that was, and still is very funny while thinking it's OK to break into someone elses phone is not).
Women are they're own worst enemies at times.
We're not our own worst enemies
By Nancy
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 4:00pm
Most of the women who ask about breaking into phones are very young - millennials under 25. Those of us who are old enough to have had relationships without cell phones tell them what Adam just did. If you distrust him to the point where you're willing to go through his phone, you have bigger problems.
So far today on that message board I have discussed grad school options with an undergrad who will finish her degree in Chemistry next year, chatted with a few women who have Polish ancestry about paczki and gave advice on what to specialize in if you want to have a long career in software development. There were some threads on breastfeeding, buying a house when you're planning on having a second baby and you're still in an apartment and other topics I didn't join.
We are not enemies. We are women who support each other. Sometimes it's serious and sometimes it's light hearted. There are women from all around the world, of all ages, races, creeds, orientations, gender identification (not cisgender female? Don't care.).
I don't know why you automatically assume that women gathering to have discussions is a bad thing and I don't know who Laura Petrie is.
Just me I guess. Some women
By Patricia
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 4:54pm
Just me I guess. Some women in your group actually think breaking into a partners cell phone is a good idea because of a boy friend?
Ya, count me out of those conversations, I've no time for stupid women and 25 years old is no excuse.
I would never go through my husbands wallet or like without being asked to.
No, can't agree.
But then again, I never got into gender specific support groups.
(Laura Petrie, Dick Van Dyke show played the wife that kept opening her husbands mail. Very funny episode)
Laura Petrie ...
By adamg
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 6:17pm
On the up and up?
By BB from Dot
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:16pm
Seinfeld was on years ago. Yes, it's in continuous rotation on some low grade cable channels, but who watches those anymore?
Nobody
By adamg
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:53pm
But certain things carve out spaces for them in your brain if you're of a certain age, which I think this columnist is.
OK, maybe a stretch, yes, not everybody watched Seinfeld.
Not on the up and up
By bosguy22
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:56pm
That's directly from Seinfeld. The whole "ride to the airport" thing is the nail in the coffin.
Vandelay!
By Andrew
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:11pm
SAY VANDELAY!
TIPPY TOE! TIPPY TOE!
By anon
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:53pm
TIPPY TOE! TIPPY TOE!
There had to be a second
By ZachAndTired
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:12pm
There had to be a second spitter!
Just dump the guy,.,,,,and
By Bugs Bunny
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:14pm
Just dump the guy,.,,,,and take a chance of Sal Bass asking you out the next time.
Ann Landers used to get that all the time
By jmeltzer
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:30pm
She'd blame it on Yale students.
"June 14, 1987
By issacg
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:35pm
Mets-Phillies. You made a big error, cost the Mets the game...
And you said, 'nice game, Pretty Boy.'"
"Keith Hernandez? I despise Keith Hernandez."
I will have to look at this. Oh, how I hope that the Globe columnist has in fact been rolled.
Or, a real life local sports
By Refugee
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:13pm
Or, a real life local sports figure had a brilliant idea for trolling somebody at their gym. My money's on Gronk.
Not local
By adamg
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 6:20pm
Chicago, I think.
"What kind of a shake does he
By bostnkid
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:41pm
(George and Jerry)
read the column tomorrow its about a group of friends having a little contest.
" A Good Friend Will Help You Move Furniture ...
By Elmer
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:50pm
really really good friends
By BikerGeek
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 1:40pm
will help you move books.
This is GOLD!
By Gary C
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:52pm
This is GOLD!
I'm not DRIVIN' him to the
By Laura82
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 1:23pm
I'm not DRIVIN' him to the airport!
Sorta related?
By Af-hack!
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 1:43pm
Grabbing a Gilbert Gottfried routine:
http://cblueval.blogspot.com/2004/03/while-leafing...
Which the Globe appeared to have noted a couple of weeks earlier as an honest mistake, but still.
Funny
By anon
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 2:38pm
I read that column and was thinking that the story sounded very familiar, but couldn't place it.
Miss Conduct
By Ishmael Jones
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 3:57pm
This wouldn't have fooled Miss Conduct.
And it probably shouldn't have fooled Amy Dickinson
By Neal
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 6:01pm
After all, she's a professional with a nationally syndicated column. But it did and she owned it with her characteristic good humor.
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