AFKBRBChocolate

Awesome.

"This glowingly price review is almost perfect, it just needs something... I know, a scream emoji!"

See this 1987 commercial if you don't get the reference. It became a pop culture phrase.

My first thought too. Doesn't look like a real pic.

I love that each has three emojis, and most of them make no sense.

Yep, those folks have always been around. There was a weird thing when email became widespread. It turns out that there are (at least were) people who will reject a stupid thing if someone says it to them, but will believe the same stupid thing if they see it written. A giant number of early viral emails were things like "According to the New York Times, gangs are targeting people who wear people shoes." Of course, the NYT never said that, it was all bullshit, but all sorts of people would swear it was true because papers were reporting it.

I hear what you're saying, but I honestly think it was just motivation and maturity. I gave you two examples, but there were a number of things that he got very frustrated about when they didn't come easily. Some were school subjects, so he didn't have a choice and had to keep pushing at it, and would eventually get there. In fact, he didn't learn those things more slowly than anyone else, it was just that he was used to getting things instantly.

There's zero doubt in my mind that he would enjoy the guitar, but he wasn't mature enough to get past the initial frustration at the time.

The first time I had Thanksgiving with my first wife's family, one of the dishes was blackberry jello with green grapes in it. I was never a big jello fan, but I took some of everything to be polite. I put a fork full in my mouth, bit down, and thought "oh no, something is rancid!" The texture was wrong, too. I was just going to spit it into my napkin when I realized it wasn't rancid, but it took a moment for me to place the flavor. It was a green olive.

That should have been a warning that there was something wrong with that family.

Some of those things are pretty double-edged though. I grew up pre-Internet. Today, if a group of friends are standing around and someone says, "I heard that platypus eat bats," someone will whip out their phone and say that's bullshit in 30 seconds. Back in the day, we could ride our bikes to the library and find out, or maybe someone's parents had encyclopedias, but we usually just didn't care that much. On the other hand, because stuff wasn't right at our fingertips, we had to reason a lot more things out. I feel like our critical thinking skills were better. Someone was bound to say, "Bats? How would that work? They live in the water and bats fly around eating bugs. I'm not buying it."

My youngest (now 27) has a bit of a problem with that. The issue is that he's smart and most things always came easy to him. He'd do those giant writing assignments the night before that are supposed to be worked on for weeks and still get the high grade. Hardly ever seemed to study, but got solid A's. But when something comes along that he's not automatically good at, he gets super frustrated. He wanted to learn the guitar in high school (I play a little), so we bought him one and some basic instruction, but he hated it because it didn't come naturally. It's a decoration on his wall.

I will give him this though: he decided a few years back that he wanted to learn to draw, and that didn't come naturally, but he's continued to work at it and has gotten pretty decent. So it's something a person can get past.

For a while the fashion was shag carpet with a random splotchy pattern in earth tones. Yes, it did a good job of hiding the dirt, but it was too good at that. I can remember hearing the cat throw up in the other room, going in to clean it up and not being able to find it until, after searching for ages, stepping in it.

Wow, how horrible. Poor guy.

Would have loved to have had a job I could read at. Retired now, so I can read as much as I want, which is kind of an unhealthy amount.