Dear Amy: I am in my sophomore year of high school. I’ve had the same best friend for 10 years.
Last year, we joined soccer, but I had to drop out part way through the season. My friend stayed in soccer and told me how much fun it was.
This year, my friend urged me to join soccer again. I started conditioning, but it was a little hard to do my homework. I have a different activity every night, usually going from around 7 to 9 p.m., depending on what the activity is. Two nights a week, I don’t even get to start my homework until 9 p.m., so I have to get up at 6:30 just to finish it (I’m taking hard classes.)
My ankle has been hurting, which has become very stressful for me because I’m a dancer and love to dance. So I quit soccer again.
Now my friend is being extremely rude toward me, saying I cannot commit to anything. She says I always quit everything — but I’m in seven other activities, and I just couldn’t make time for soccer.
What should I do? My friend is extremely rude, but I think it would be a shame to drop a friendship of 10 years just because of soccer. Please help?
— Soccer Stressed
Dear Stressed: First of all, you don’t need to explain your choices, especially when they are what’s best for you and not hurting anybody else.
Your friend is trying to exert the kind of peer pressure that you should always try to resist. When your friend reacts to your choice by being rude to you, she isn’t being much of a friend.
It’s time for a “do-over.” If you care to maintain this friendship, you can say to her, “I’m sorry you don’t like it that I dropped out of soccer, but it was the right choice for me.”
I can’t help but add my “Mom” advice here and tell you that if you are overloaded and overwhelmed, you really should scale back. I think that every teenager should have enough free time to occasionally stare into space, write aimlessly in her diary, listen to pop music that has no particular social or intellectual value, and practice dance steps alone in her room. You need time to develop your own personality and inner life, and you can’t do that if you’re too busy and stressed.
Dear Amy: I enjoy your thoughtful solutions to perplexing everyday dilemmas. Now I have one for you.
What is the best way to decline to provide a salesperson with personal details such as name, phone number, where I work out, etc.?
I mean, I’m already in the store computer, which has my address, phone number and buying habits for the last umpteen years, for heaven’s sake, and I’ve just handed my credit card over, so why do I need to verbalize for everyone within earshot my name, etc.?
Even if no one is around to eavesdrop, it seems creepy for the salesperson to want to know my name. I usually mumble something unintelligible, and then I feel like such a wimp when they finally extract the pertinent moniker from me.
Is mine a legitimate beef?
— No Name No Number
Dear No Name: I can’t think of any legitimate reason for a salesperson to ask a customer where she works out, so let’s assume that the person asking that was overstepping the line and perhaps interested in more than your retail business.
If you have handed over your cash or credit card, a store already has everything they need — your money. If asked for your phone number or any other piece of personal information, you should decline by saying “no thanks.” If asked for your name — especially when it is already on your credit card, you should hand over your driver’s license to discreetly confirm your identity and declare that you are “Myrna Loy.”
That’s what I do, anyway.
Dear Amy: I was glad to see someone else write to you mentioning how inappropriate it is for women to breast-feed in public.
Women use the excuse that it is “natural,” but many bodily functions are natural and we don’t care to watch people doing these other “natural” things.
Women also now seem to have the attitude that pregnancy should be “celebrated” with tight clothes and bare bellies. The Hollywood crowd is most at fault. Sorry, mothers-to-be, but I think you look tacky.
— Bugged in Boston
Dear Bugged: I wonder what it is about the sight of breastfeeding or pregnant women that makes some people so uncomfortable. Women have babies. Then they feed said babies. I really don’t understand what it is about that simple fact of life that is so offensive.
Readers?
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Ask Amy appears Mondays through Fridays in Tempo, Saturdays in the Weekend section and Sundays in Q. Send questions via e-mail to askamy@tribune.com or by mail to Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Previous columns are available at Chicagotribune.com/amy.
