Ask Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I think it’s really disturbing when parents try to be besties with their teen-age (or younger) kids. Overstepping those bounds will confuse children the rest of their lives. However, adult children get to decide to be friends with their parents. Like, I recently started getting high with my dad. He just retired from the Army and gets to smoke dope for the first time since high school. First of all: he’s hysterical. Second of all: this is cool, right?

- High-larity Ensues

Dear Junior,

Sure, it’s cool. Why not? I mean, I’m undeniably cool, so I get to be the arbiter of coolness, I guess. I see no good reason not to get lit with your pops, though. The dynamics of the father/child relationship receive the flexibility to shift and mutate as the children establish themselves in adulthood. And nothing screams “I’m a mature individual! Respect me, Dad!” like smokin’ a doobie.

– Roll a number, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

How do business partners decide which of their names goes first on the company shingle? I can see a few ways about this. There’s alphabetical: Duckfart, Jones, Prick and Renaldo. Or you

could go for the iambic rhythm: Renaldo, Duck-fart, Jones and Prick. But I have a feeling the decision is usually much more hierarchical, possibly involving arm wrestling or drag racing. Whatever the answer, why use names at all? It just makes the Garfunkels of the world feel bad about themselves.

– Second Fiddle

Dear Oates,

Oh, this is a fascinating question. Perhaps they arrange themselves according to the Dewey Decimal System. Maybe it’s like airline flights, and the ones with elite membership status get to choose the window seats first. They could assign point values to letters, then score their names. Soap box derby? The best solution of all, of course, is to find partners with the same name, so everyone believes that they are the ultimate Johnson in Johnson & Johnson.

– I’m with stupid, Rachel & Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I’m seriously addicted to certain Instagram pages that offer endless intertainment. (That was a typo but I like it; I should probably # it now!) These include drunkpeopledoingthings, golfersdoingthings and jerryoftheday. No more scouring the internet for reasons not to work. These feeds compile all the schadenfreude I need to survive the week. The only way this could get better is if it were my job to curate these feeds! How can I find that job?

- Insta-Grammy Awards

Dear Jobhunter,

What the heck is jerryoftheday? Like, here’s a picture of Seinfeld, here’s one of Lee Lewis, here’s one of the second-best ice cream maker in Vermont? I had to look it up, and I was disappointed to learn that it has something to do with skiers, some of them wearing only skis and underwear. It’s May, for chrissake. I’m so over skiing. But if you start an Insta about highparentsdoingthings, I’m done for.

– Like, whoa, man, Rachel