Dear Amy: I am a teenager, and I hope you can help my family with a problem we are facing.
Recently, “Linda,” a friend of my mother’s, lost her job and her apartment. Our house is fairly large, and we had a bedroom to spare, so my mother invited her to stay with us for a while, intending it to be temporary, until Linda could find a job.
That was five months ago, and Linda has been living with my two younger brothers, my parents and me ever since.
She treats our house like a hotel. She spends most of her time using our computers to send e-mail to her friends, which she does about five times daily, or hangs around watching TV.
When she does laundry, she simply removes our wet load and drops it on top of our dryer without even telling my mom.
She has not once offered to help with cooking or housework, and when my parents asked her to watch the house when we are on vacation, she was incredulous and begrudging.
Linda will also take weekend trips without mentioning where she is going, leaving us to take care of her cat that has severe medical problems and has accidents inside our house.
When my parents asked if she had found job or apartment leads, she acted shocked and offended, and said she hadn’t even been looking! The trouble is, my mother is worried that if we give her an ultimatum, Linda will talk behind our backs to their mutual friends about how we “kicked her out,” and my mom really doesn’t want it to get ugly.
How can we get her out of our house and still take the high road?
– Stuck With a Sponger
Dear Stuck: Your family has already surrendered “the high road.” In addition to the sick cat, the gobs of wet laundry and her control over your television remote, this “incredulous and begrudging” sponger is also a “low-road rider.” It’s time for your family to forget about its dignity and get Linda the heck out. She should be given a move-out date. This is not an ultimatum. Ultimatums involve a deal of some kind. This is a date on the calendar, circled in red, which will be her moving day.
I suggest that your parents get together on this, plan their strategy and firmly stick to it.
If any of their mutual friends don’t like what they’ve done, then your parents can say, “OK. Fine. You want Linda? I’m sure she’d love to stay with you. We’ll drop off her stuff in the morning. And, oh, Mittens needs his meds every three hours.”
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Dear Amy: In one of your recent columns, you asked what men think of women who make the first move.
When I was a young man, I would have been delighted to have a woman call me and express her interest.
While I am now 87 years old and happily married for 47 years, I still wouldn’t mind having a woman call me. It would be terribly flattering.
– Kent in Los Angeles
Dear Kent: Consider yourself called, my friend.
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