Dear LFTP: declining dinner invitations from snippy neighbors
- Should I accept dinner invitations from neighbors I dislike and expect to be awful?
A second Dear LFTP letter describes two former classmates who bought houses next door; one neighbor, 'Evie,' is a snippy know-it-all with a sugar-daddy boyfriend who yells over the fence and keeps inviting the couple to dinner and happy hour. The hosts advise starting fresh: accept once, forget everything assumed, and see — the cost is one evening with a two-minute escape route. A running joke suggests sabotaging the hosts' bathroom to avoid re-invitation (eggnog-fueled 'wrecking,' yellow food coloring in the tank, a fish skeleton in the upper deck). The 'secular' answer is read: keep making excuses and pray they get the hint, which the hosts mock as unworkable.
More on Hospitality
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Dear LFTP: the single man and the holiday cliques
- Would it be wrong for the lonely single man to start declining holiday invitations?
The first Dear LFTP letter: a single man, happy with his life and plenty of friends and family, dreads the holidays — at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings of 15 to 25 people,…
From No. 603 · Found Out
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Dear LFTP: the inclusive dinner and the autistic boy
- How can I stay inclusive when a new family's severely autistic child disrupts my neighborhood movie night?
Mike reads the first Dear LFTP letter: a single woman hosts monthly inclusive neighborhood dinners and movie nights (kids, dogs, a ramp for an elderly neighbor), but a new…
From No. 600 · Rage The Elephant
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Dear LFTP #2: friends who always bring extra people
- How do we stop friends from inviting extra people to our gatherings?
Mike reads the second letter: dear friends who socialize a lot keep inviting extra people to gatherings at the listener's lake house — including, once, a passed-out stranger ('my coyote fell asleep on the couch').
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Dear LFTP: the $600 lawnmower and buying them a mower
- My nephew's wife took my $600, lied about it, and is avoiding me. Should I say something or let it go?
Mike reads a letter from someone who gave a nephew's wife $600 for a self-propelled lawnmower; she spent it, never bought the mower, and now avoids them.
From No. 587 · Coffee After Sunday