Cock fight, shoulder season and buzzing off

Dear Rachel,

I am an officer and gentleman. As a Navy pilot, I fly with the best women pilots in the world. Now I have non-military women tell me I can’t say “Let’s get in the cockpit to fight for our country.” What am I to do with this? This is not my mission to come up with a new name. I need your help.

- Top Gun

Dear Cockfighter,

I’m going to recommend you speak with a dialogue coach. No one talks like that. No one. You sound like a campy send-up or some kind of patriot porn: “Let’s get in the cockpit to fight for our country”? It’s not the words you use, Top Gun: it’s how you use them.

– Try again, flyboy, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I just spent a week visiting the grandkids out of state. Lots of playtime. Except now, it turns out I need rotator cuff surgery. It seems likely to me that hoisting my grandkids exacerbated it. Not the little ones’ faults, but my kid owes me one. How can I leverage this?

-– Heavy Lifting

Dear Cold Shoulder,

Sadly, you don’t get to leverage this with your own kid. They’re too old. But the grandkids? They are gullible. You get to milk your bum shoulder the rest of their childhood. Fly them out and make a game out of everything you need done: raking leaves, sweeping floors, chopping wood, being passive aggressive with their parents. It’ll be some real quality time.

– Guiltlessly, Rachel 

Dear Rachel,

I keep seeing think pieces (and hearing annoying friends) saying that I need to get out of “hustle culture” and take more time for presence, mindfulness, joy and all that. But they don’t tell me how I’m supposed to pay my bills when I cut out work. How do I tell them to stuff it unless they’re going to pay me to chill?

- Overworked & Underpaid

Dear Hustler,

I say join the military! You can’t say “cockpit” anymore, it seems, but you’ll get to see the world. Panama, Canada, Greenland … . Plus, you’ll get the promise of a lifetime of financial and medical support. You won’t actually GET that support, but you’ll have the PROMISE of it. Plus, you’ll have the pride of knowing you survived long enough to have grandkids someday … presuming you make it out alive.

– Three square a day, Rachel