Remember me? I have an invisible friend, Greta, remember, and I went to Spain to bring her back after her invisible boyfriend dumped her? Then he followed her here, remember?

They are sleeping together in Greta’s bedroom. But now Greta has no time for me. And I can’t visit my son too often, because his wife gets nervous when I’m around for some strange reason. So now I’m lonely again.

And then, when my son does come over to visit me, because he wants to see me more often than his wife does, well then, Greta’s boyfriend picks and picks at him, and says nasty things. He’s jealous because Greta was once my son’s girlfriend. When I tell my son what he’s said, of course he gets mad and then he threatens not to visit me again if Greta’s boyfriend keeps on being so mean to him. But I am really lonesome, Gabby. What should I do?

Yours truly,

Lonely mom

Dear Lonely:

Has it never occurred to you that you don’t have to pass on nasty things said to you by one person about another person? You must really love drama. And there’s always the suspicion on the part of the person hearing the lousy gossip about himself, that you kind of agree with the original gossiper. So I don’t wonder that your son is angry.

Have you asked Greta’s boyfriend to find a nice, gentlemanly, rather romantic and somewhat phlegmatic invisible male friend for you, about your age, and with similar interests? What interests do you have, by the way, besides Greta and your son?

Keep in touch. I find you quite interesting, dear. Hopefully, so would a male invisible friend.

Dear Gabby:

So I took your advice, and tried not to tell the next girl to talk to me, to piss off. It was hard. I’m so used to it.

My dad still tells my mom to piss off. So she does, from time to time. Doesn’t make me feel any more friendly to the female race, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, this girl kept on talking to me, and then I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there like a stupid jerk and then she walked away. Now what?

Yours truly,

Wierded out

Dear Out:

Yes. Yours is a difficult case, my son. You are a newly arrived immigrant into the land of courtship.

Clearly, your mom and dad left that country quite some time ago so they’re no help. And the stuff on TV and cinema is useless. Things move a lot faster in pretend life than they do in real life.

It’s really quite like Hell to begin to try to figure out how to get close to a woman, dear.  Men just don’t seem to have that location in their brain sufficiently fired up to master the skills easily. And the ones that do, are often schmucks.

Ask some nice girl you like to teach you how. Humility occasionally works.

For obvious reasons The Flying Shingle tries never to disagree with our Dear Gabby, but unfortunately sometimes we do.