Dear Blake,
I’m a 60-year-old man with an information technology background. I have recently been offered paid commercial driver’s license training, which entails a good year of coast-to-coast driving. This pays a lot of money, but my mother is dead set against it, probably because it will mean less time to spend with her. My brother lives two hours away and visits her perhaps monthly, whereas I visit twice a week.
I have little desire to continue in IT. I’m getting a lot of pushback here, including unrealistic suggestions for local employment. How can I manage these conflicting pressures?
Signed Wayne
From Carson City, Nevada
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Dear Wayne,
So you’re concerned about how to appease your mother who doesn’t want you on the road. Sometimes you have to use kid gloves when you deal with a selfish whiney old bat. Here are some suggestions. Tell her you’ll stay as long as she leaves everything to you in her will, and pretend that your brother was never born. Or, tell her that you’ll keep your old job, providing that she’ll pay the difference considering how much you’ll be losing if you yield to her constant belly aching. If you are 60, then your mother is probably in her 80s or 90s, so you may want to honor her request, and visit her regularly, because soon she won’t have any idea who you are. And lastly, if your mother wants to be near you, then when you travel driving a truck across the country take her with you, not sitting next you in the cab, but in the trailer with all of the products that you’ll be hauling. And if she starts screaming, demanding to be let out, yell back at her that if she doesn’t shut up, you’ll drive over some rough roads, and she’ll be shaken more than some dice at a Las Vegas casino. I hope this helps.
Blake