No, it doesn't get better, it just gets worse and worse

With Mother Salaryman haunting the household, and adding work and baby Sunshine to that, things are quite busy as you can imagine. But with a three day weekend coming up now (yep, Monday is one of those great made-up holidays, "Sports day" this time), there will be some breathing room at least.

Last time I met up with dear old mother, she told me that she had joined a bridge club in the hometown in Sweden, for retirees. She was quite excited as she told me of this new found hobby and how many new people she met through the events. However, after a few minutes of excitement, she got a bit sadder and added; "no one wants to partner up and play with me though, they say I'm too bad at it...".

With Mother Salaryman back here in Japan, I felt a certain need to inquire as to whether this bullying had continued or whether she had started to get some enjoyment out of the Bridge club now after a year. Again, Mother quite excitedly launched into an explanation on how things had started to brighten up and how she had found her Bridge partner; it seems like the fellow that she got teamed up with had suffered some form of stroke and brain damage, leaving him quite prone to forget things and in addition, a previous accident had left him with only one finger left on one of his hands, making it difficult for him to properly manage to hold his hand on his own... But apparently she found this rising star to latch on to in the local Bridge tournaments...

In the end, Mother proudly announced that she's no longer always the person at the end of the ranking, sometimes her partner falls behind her... Well, I think the lesson learnt here is that for most of us regular guys, it just doesn't get better, it just gets worse, but you can always cover up with someone that's doing worse than you....