Hello readers. I hope your Valentine’s Day was a good one, or at least not too crushing a disappointment. So often we invest so much emotion and anticipation in one particular holiday that it can never live up to our fervent hopes and dreams. New Year’s Eve comes to mind, or Amateur Night as those of us with a few miles on our odometers refer to it. Valentine’s Day, with a more-than-able assist from greedy corporations, is tailor-made for a huge letdown. Love, like life itself, is a process, not an event.
Love is never perfect, any more than any of us are, and investing unrealistic expectations in something as magical and hard to define as love is a setup for major disillusionment. No need to go there. Appreciate your loved ones every day, and measure the strength of your relationships on their endurance, their continuing tenderness and understanding, and not on one particular day. If we fell out of love when a bad day occurred, every relationship would be over inside a month. At most. That said, let’s check the inbox and see how your lives are progressing. Or not, as the case may be:
Dear Dot Kahm: Gee, I wish I’d read your intro before I wrote this letter, but what’s done is done. Anyway, I’m a single man in his late twenties and I’ve been dating Hillary for three years. Ours has been a special relationship and this Valentine’s Day I decided to pop the question. I asked her to live with me. She turned me down, Dot, and I can’t get over it. Now she’s so mad at me she doesn’t want to see me anymore. I knew she wanted to get married, but I figured that we’d ease into it. I’ve been crying ever since. What am I going to do? – Miserable in Manhasset
Dear Miserable: Here’s what you’re going to do: Get over it, you sniveling wimp! After three damned years, now you decide to take the tepid step of playing house? That’s something lovers do in the first few months of a relationship if they’re of a mind to do so. Three years is more than enough time to know whether or not you want to marry that person, and to know the mind of that person, if they may have objections to living together versus marrying. Didn’t you know? You insulted the lady, Miserable, and she is to be commended for not bitch-slapping your whining face purple! When it was time to shit or get off the pot, you farted and sat there like a mook. Maybe with the next lady who’s good enough to invest a chunk of her life with you, you’ll grow a pair of testicles and let her know that either you’re not the marrying kind, and that’s okay too, or that you want her forever, and then let her make her decision fully informed. As always, honesty is the best policy, starting with yourself, which you obviously are not.
Dear Dot Kahm: What’s a mook? -Wondering in Wisconsin
Dear Wondering in Wisconsin: Mook is Brooklyn term, meaning a person who simply does not get it, whatever it is, unless it is about them. To a mook, the portion of any conversation not specifically about them sounds sort of like a feint humming sound, or background noise, and is paid no mind at all. That’s a mook, as in: Don’t be a mook! Never dignify a mook with a capital M, either.
Dear Dot Kahm: Like you, Dot, I am from Brooklyn. My boyfriend asked me where I’d like to go on a beautiful Sunday afternoon last summer and when I told him Coney Island, he laughed! He’s not from New York and has never been there, but he had the nerve to tell me Coney Island is a chaotic old wreck in the middle of a slum. I just wanted to share a special place in my hometown with the guy and he completely blew me off, so I dumped him. Was I too hasty? – Coney Island Baby
Dear Coney Island Baby: Hasty, shmasty! There’s magic in Coney Island girl, a place like no other on Earth. I’m glad you wrote me now, Hon, since the middle of a hard winter is the perfect time to think abut Coney Island. Let that fool visit one of those uber-boring homogenized and controlled theme parks in the middle of nowhere with his homogenized and controlled new girlfriend (which rules out Brooklyn ladies!). No Nathans, no freak shows, no gypsies from who-knows-where speaking who-knows-what language, no Cyclone and no Wonder Wheel, and no boardwalk with a beach filled with a million smiling faces! And here’s some more good news, kiddo: by opening day, a rebuilt Luna Park will be open this year with 23 new rides. You were right to dump that chump, not only for his disrespect of Coney Island, but for dismissing your thoughts and wishes out of hand, and for insisting on sticking to an opinion based on no knowledge, facts or experience, as fatal a flaw and any human being can possess! Take your new man to Coney Island and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden too! He will thank you for sharing special Brooklyn places and opening his eyes.
Dear Dot Kahm: What do you think about the exciting news that King Tut died of Malaria? – Brian Jiggs
Dear Brian: Not much. Shouldn’t you be writing to Sammy Science? The only stiffs that excite me aren’t mummies, if you catch my drift, pal.
Dear Dot Kahm: Are you single? I’d sure like to meet you. – Teddy Bear
Dear Teddy Bear: I am, and you sure can meet me, Teddy Bear. That is, if the photo you sent me is really you. If not, be prepared for a beat down from a black belt in RHIAW, which stands for Random Household Items As Weapons. Review my honesty guidelines before approaching.
Dear Dot Kahm: Do you believe in coincidence? – Wondering in Waukegan?
Dear Wondering: That’s funny, I was just thinking about coincidence! What a … oh never mind!
Dear Dot Kahm: My husband is a police detective, and he says there is no such thing as a coincidence! – Mona from Staten Island
Dear Mona: That’s funny, I was just thinking about how cops never seem to believe in coincidences! Spooky, no?
Dear Dot Kahm: How’s this for a coincidence – my name is Dot and I also come from Brooklyn! – Dot Saul
Dear Dot Saul: Sorry, but I think we’ve exhausted the subject of coincidence.
Well, readers, we seem to be getting off topic here, so good old Dot Kahm is signing off for now. I’ve got to get ready for a hot date with Teddy Bear. Until next time, be good, be kind and be honest, and demand the same of others.