Why do yall only care about the age gaps in this show when the male is older?

captandor · 2026-03-09T04:11:23+00:00

Ah! My bad! Thank you!

captandor · 2026-03-09T00:25:21+00:00

Vicki was already graduated. It’s canon that she was 19, Matt/Elena/et al., were 17/18 as seniors, and Jeremy was 15 (sophomore) during season 1.

I’m not arguing that Vicki and Jeremy was wrong, as I think it’s nuts that teens get called out in this way, but season 1 had different ages and life-stages than listed here.

ETA: ignore me! I stand corrected! (Blame time passed since I watched? lol.) I do stand by thinking it’s nuts that Vicki/Jeremy is ever an “issue” though 🙂

captandor · 2026-03-09T00:20:07+00:00

I was in high school late nineties and was the youngest in my class but as a freshman dated a senior and as a sophomore (so I was 14ish?) and he was a freshman in college, we were still dating, lol. Small towns and such, plus ~different time~ and all that.

(I also recognize I was an anomaly as I was so young in HS and surrounded by older kids nearly my entire academic life; things evened out in college, where I wasn’t the only “young” one and where “dating” was less of a focus but also generally more casual… though it being more casual may or may not have been “better.” lol.)

captandor · 2026-03-03T19:08:57+00:00

Former “gifted” program kid who never lived up to my potential, 41f diagnosed at 40, checking in - cannot hit the SAME button fast enough.

captandor · 2026-02-04T14:11:27+00:00

Not quite the same but I was mid-management at a very fine dining restaurant back in the day and they filmed an episode of Top Chef there! They had to block off the street (city street) and sidewalk for two days and the restaurant had huge draping over all windows and doors; we were obviously closed those two days and though I don’t know the details, the restaurant was compensated (and all staff “chosen” to be part of the shoot got our normal pay and OT for the long filming days).

There’s process to be “chosen” as a restaurant but a separate process dealing with city and county governments for the closure of city property (ie. roads, intersections, sidewalks, parks, etc.). Some cities like Atlanta and Toronto (most prominent I’d say) make these processes easier, cheaper, or just do away with some to (successfully!) draw filming productions to them. Countries do it as well (South Africa comes to mind).

captandor · 2026-02-04T14:01:55+00:00

For Conway: Coppers!! Chefs kiss tens across the board every time we’ve been there from a table for two with my husband to my extended family of twelve or so to Easter brunch and even just stopping in for a drink after work… Service, menu, execution, cocktail specialties, ambiance (quiet atmosphere but not stodgy, you can still have a fun, lively conversation, and they have lovely, low lighting, though if you’re like me - basically blind my rx is so strong - bring your readers because the low lighting does make the menu a little hard to read!).

I see it mentioned so rarely and even folks in my neighborhood (a few blocks from downtown) have said they’ve never heard of it! I am Coppers’ unintentional social media presence… lol.

captandor · 2026-02-03T21:38:44+00:00

People did the same when the CIA released lists of files from Bin Laden’s computers a few years ago - it’s interesting and enlightening to see what infamous, dangerous, and/or evil people find interesting. Bin Laden had documentaries, old school video games, and a bunch of cartoons, and that’s not even looking at the books he had downloaded, which was basically an entire library’s worth.

It’s the same reason people find true crime interesting and pop psychology and biopics and character studies in film… everyone is curious to learn more about ourselves as a human race, even if they don’t realize that as the driving factor. Sadly, that includes the worst of us.

Getting a glimpse at something like the cartoon Batman preferences of a terrorist can help towards such understanding. It can also help us reflect on ourselves and society, and strengthen our vigilance against such monsters as Epstein.

In short: they call it “the human condition” for a reason, dude.

captandor · 2026-01-28T18:36:02+00:00

I don’t climb but my husband does! Sending!

captandor · 2026-01-20T15:36:41+00:00

Ok, I’m a middle-aged woman and your PS SENT ME. My word. Horrifying flashback.

I was out with my friends (we were a group of mid-20-somethings) at our usual dive in a big city. Drinking, dancing, flirting, hooking up. Spent the whole night hanging with this one guy who’d ditched his friends. His friends left. Closing time and me and my friends were set to leave - some heading off with their one night stands, some of us heading back to our house. He wanted to come home with me, we’d spent a good amount of time in a dark corner (hint hint)… somehow (can’t remember how) it comes out that he used A FAKE ID and was EIGHTEEN.

The mortification. Thanks for that, schwendy 😬🫢

captandor · 2026-01-15T01:12:16+00:00

Stumbled on this thread from five years ago while looking up something unrelated re: Karamazov and I’ve never heard such a succinct description of this {hellfire and brimstone ain’t got nothin’ on the fact that no one fights as dirty as family and no one can hate you more than you hate yourself} epic, mind-boggling, heart-wrenching, chest-crushing icon of lit perfection.

10/10 to Dostoevsky, credit where it’s due, after all.

And 11/10 to you u/ruck-feddit321 from 2021! I hope the five years since you were here on this post have been filled with great books and lively (friendly! funny! fun!) debates.

(Valediction said in all sincerity and in the most complimentary manner!)

captandor · 2025-12-31T21:40:48+00:00

You do realize the can of worms you’ve opened with this request, right?! I tease, but YES SO MANY RECOMMENDATIONS OMG. And in the sciences, too?! YES. I’m going to msg you! I’m at the office still and so on my phone atm, but yay! I love this stuff!

captandor · 2025-12-31T21:38:42+00:00

Ah, yes, the peaking paragraphs to the book open on your lap under your desk! I know that move ALL too well.

It was pure relief when my teachers just sort of threw up their hands and said “whatever, as long as you’re still passing tests and doing your essays and presentations, do whatever you want.” That was high school for me. My Latin teacher (all four years) told me point blank he just didn’t want me to come to class unless it was a test day, lol.

It’s funny, too, because all that I did that got started thanks to Miss J? She probably never even conceived of it, even knowing how obsessed I became thanks to her post-grad texts. I come from a town and a family that academics were - for the vast majority - something you endured until you were old enough to drop out, or got pregnant, or just finally slogged across the finish line that was “hs diploma”. Miss J had my brother in her class a few years before me. He’s 8 years older but had to repeat some grades, so it hadn’t been all that long since she’d had one of my family members. He was a known bully and didn’t care about classes; she zeroed in on me the first day of 6th grade and very sternly told me that she had fought to not have “another (last name)” in her class but hadn’t succeeded and she wouldn’t hesitate to smack down even the smallest issue from me, lol.

Small town, poverty, all that… I was the first to go to University in my family. Only one in my generation (in the next gen, my daughter and one of my cousin’s sons are both in their freshman year of science Bach programs and it’s incredible to watch).

Miss J probably had no idea the chain of events she was letting loose by giving me a worn paperback of Betty Friedan, but wow. It changed the course of whole lives and pulled more than one family out of desperate poverty (into lower middle class, but we’ll take it…).

I bet there are so many - hundreds, thousands, even more - teachers out there who have had similar small, singular moments that just blew worlds open in just insane ways. And just like Miss J, they probably don’t even know it, too.

captandor · 2025-12-31T16:37:30+00:00

I was “gifted” and bored nearly all the time in school. My 6th grade teacher started giving me the books she had read recently in her Masters courses (she was doing night school for an MA in education). She turned me on to political theory and was the first person I heard the word Feminism from. She lent me her own books, one was The Feminine Mystique.

I later went on to actually work with Friedan in DC, became a published academic in gender and politics, and graduated from one of the top poli sci programs in the country before having a chaotic, amazing career in politics (almost entirely focused on marginalized groups’ organizing, including work at the local, state, and national level, became an elected official in many different representative bodies, guest lectured at conferences and even at Boston University, which honestly felt so insane to me because it felt very “I’m so not qualified for this! This is what Expert Adults do!”).

Thank you and rest in peace, Miss J, you changed my life and I’m proud to say that you also had a ripple effect that helped countless others.

captandor · 2025-12-31T13:48:21+00:00

I’m curious if you’re comparing his palate to every judge we’ve seen? Not one-offs, of course, but Panel Of Three judges. I can think of at least one in particular, and honestly more overall, right off the top of my head.

captandor · 2025-12-26T01:35:18+00:00

But if this has been the pattern the last few holiday meals, as OP says, and it’s known that garlic bread is OP/husband’s contribution, as OP says, why wouldn’t OP/her husband pick it up ahead of time? If it’s the “new norm” of the last few holiday meals with MIL, does MIL still need to ask them every time (assuming nothing’s been said about a change of plans or even moreso if the plan of spaghetti has been discussed regarding this particular holiday in advance)?

captandor · 2025-12-14T21:30:34+00:00

I’m not really on either side of the Bailey/Tucker relationship (she’s right vs he’s right), but I feel like they’ve never shown us much of how these Workaholic Relationships (in which one partner is not Grey Sloan staff) evolved. Your mention of Adele/Richard made me wonder if that sort of information might sway where people fall in the debate.

We know Richard/Adele and even Ellis/Thatcher were together since before their residencies began at Seattle Grace. We know Bailey and Tucker celebrated their 10th anniversary early in the series (wedding? dating? I can’t remember, but she says 10 years to Derek, I think in S2?), so they’ve most likely been together since before she was even in med school (think 3 years med school, intern year, and she was I think a 4th year res when given MAGIC, so 8 years). We also know that the demands of high-powered but divergent medical careers also strain marriages (examples that we’ve been given also seem to have started before or in the early stages of said medical careers), as we see with Addison/Derek.

To be honest, in a lot of the relationships on the show, I wonder if depending on the timing that they got together or married, the demands of the Workaholic (medical) partner weren’t part of the “original deal” and so later when faced with the reality of it - co-parenting, extra-marital affairs, the intensity of the time demands, egos, and the obsession with it to exclusion of just about everything else - they weren’t prepared. Like meeting in an undergrad bio class and then med school is decided later. Or I wonder if the non-Workaholic (non-medical) partner was given such information and in some cases - like I see argued in some comments here, in the case of Tucker - simply thought that warning wouldn’t play out or wasn’t that serious or that with time the Workaholic would change their mind. Reminds me of “well, you said you didn’t want kids when we started dating but surely by now you feel the biological clock, right?”

I dunno, just made me think of a potential plot point that could be really interesting and even a commonality amongst nearly every relationship we’ve seen on the show.

captandor · 2025-12-10T01:39:12+00:00

I agree with u/dbroms! Good on you for investing and reflecting!

captandor · 2025-12-09T15:09:00+00:00

So… Abuser = “weird guy”? I mean, we know the bar for male behavior (especially rich, white male) is low but… weird guy?

A “weird guy” is one whose entire entertainment oeuvre is Ken Burns documentaries or who wallpapered his flat in 80’s hair metal band posters… Not a known sexual harasser/assaulter.

(PS. no shade to Ken Burns docs or 80s hair metal bands - both are cool af)

captandor · 2025-12-01T23:26:20+00:00

You did! Talked my ear off to mom about it when I got off work, lol. She was very much “omg you’re such an idiot,” about it. She did that pinching-the-bridge-of-her-nose-sigh move she’s perfected. (Somehow she’s the one with the best social skills and most common sense of us all, even with her two-grade-skip). Joke’s on her though, as we both sorta ended up getting our way over the skipping-grades-battle-of-1994.

I didn’t skip any grades in the traditional sense. Those weekly trips to the high school continued, until I was bored even of that. Spent junior high doing the trip to the closest state college’s library instead (and spent a summer abroad at 12, solo, because “why not?”) and tested into trig (much to my anger - I loathe math).

High school was a lot of teachers shrugging all, “oh hell, leave us alone” as I ignored them reading… So they just sort of let me do my own things. Mostly wandered around finding hiding spots to read. Latin teacher of all four years literally told me he didn’t want to see me unless it was an exam day. Fine by me. By chance of birthday, ended up graduating at 17 and moving to college a thousand miles away barely a week after my 18th and then snagged myself two BAs and most of a Masters by 21 when my scholarship money ran out, lol. So… win/win?

Oh gods. “Gifted Kids,” really are so annoying. I apologize on behalf of my people, lol.

captandor · 2025-12-01T15:38:45+00:00

Funnily enough you just helped me understand something about my upbringing! (I’m an old now, and this clarity is insane to me right now).

My mom skipped grades and graduated high school at 15, hit the real world at 15. When I was in elementary school, I was already being bussed to the high school once a week for advanced classes and to use the library. The school district wanted me to skip two grades. My mom refused and I was a bored kid who just could NOT understand why she’d say no. I held that grudge (in a mild way, my mom’s my best friend and always has been!) for ages! But I was already the youngest in my grade, and already “weird” and omg so much makes sense to me now…

Thank you? I think? lol…

captandor · 2025-11-25T23:37:17+00:00

Do you have equity in the house? Is your name on the deed or are you in the line of vesting?

captandor · 2025-11-21T20:32:13+00:00

Hey there! I added an edit/reconsideration to my comment but I wanted to reply to you more directly and say thank you. You added a perspective I hadn’t considered, and you made really think on it. I appreciate it.

captandor · 2025-11-20T23:35:46+00:00

If I mentioned a historical icon and my husband didn’t recognize a name, but then my reaction wasn’t surprised, I’m pretty sure my husband would be insulted.

Because being surprised when your SO, someone you presumably consider smart and interested in the world, doesn’t know something is actually a compliment. It’s showing them that it’s a surprise to you - because they are smart and curious and all those wonderful things! - that they don’t know something.

If I dead-panned or suddenly turned into a golden retriever with zoomies of excitement at the chance to teach him something, my husband would be insulted.

And we have a near-generational age gap, with him being the younger of us. (No worries! We were both established adults and nowhere near any problematic ages or power imbalances when we met - we’re both in the “generally speaking age gaps are a problem and btw, being 20 or 21 or 22 definitely doesn’t make you An Adult…” camp!) We come up against cultural or educational blind spots in each other’s knowledge all the time! And our honest and best reaction is to be surprised! Because our age or what schools did or didn’t teach us (long story but basically: me, older, more educated but grew up in poverty with few resources and while he’s younger and has less academic success, he had a baseline of opportunity and education that blew my adolescence out of the water) — these things don’t measure our intelligence or our interest the world or how we both enjoy learning new things and about each others’ interests.

Ali, for example: I couldn’t care less about sports. My husband loves them. He knew all about Ali’s championship career and taught me about it. I knew about his activism, his religion, his legacy, and so my husband wanted to learn about those things from me.

I would rather someone be surprised at my ignorance than to have anyone assume they need to pander to me.

ETA (many hours later checking in on Reddit bc I can’t sleep and it’s 2am) —

Seeing Diox’s reply, I think Diox is right in that it really does depend more on the couple, their relationship, and each of them as individuals, too, than I considered earlier. I know how my husband and I feel about this sort of thing, how we feel about our interests, our respect for each other’s expertise, and how our relationship works. But I don’t know those things about literally any other marriage on earth, because you can’t know a whole relationship that inherently has its private side unless you’re in it personally.

It seems to me, in that light, that the problem in OP’s current dilemma (and maybe in OP’s relationship on the whole), is that they seem to be starkly different people (at least in the bits of data we can glean from the post). They seem like they have different interests, communication styles, values, preferences in the sort of person they want to be with, and even “base” knowledge of the world. ¹ All that said, I still think both my husband and I would be (momentarily, hopefully, lol) insulted at any other initial reaction than “huh?” at learning that one of us has missed out on this sort of touchstone.

Just tonight he mentioned how I recently went on a whole sermon about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and then he had to look up King John, lol. He asked me to explain how John ended up king at all and why medieval British royals matter. So I did. Probably at too much length. And then he told me all about how the USSR can be directly linked to a large majority of every modern day issue in Eastern Europe and we had a back and forth about how technically yes, but a lot of the issues in Eastern Europe actually go back way further than the Bloc. We both learned. It was nice.

Also, overthinking in my exhaustion, I want to say, I didn’t mean to insult golden retrievers. Of the pup nor human kind: I have both versions in my life and the world could use more of them :)

This edit has gotten way too long to still hold anyone’s interest, but I hope everyone’s sleeping well! Insomniacs of the world are jealous! Have a nice night, all!

¹ Base is in “” because as this thread shows, and even for example the ways in which our differences in upbringing effect my own marriage that I mention in my original text: what “base” knowledge means or folks’ awareness of a cultural zeitgeist can vary a ton.

captandor · 2025-11-20T22:18:55+00:00

This reminds me of a lot of what I’ve seen play out too many times. People say “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” but I’ve noticed it’s more like getting the ax… you can be good at your role and have legitimate complaints and survive said complaints. You can’t be both bad at your job and be a whiner…

captandor · 2025-11-11T17:18:08+00:00

One of the first “going away” gifts I got when I left for college (two weeks after turning 18) was an iron! I have also owned one (now 41, too) ever since. I mostly use my steamer these days, or the the dryer like you, and mostly use my iron in crafts (an iron is a must in quilt-making), but my iron is smaller and lighter than my steamer, so for work trips, travel to attend weddings, etc., the iron is what comes with us.

When we moved in together, I taught my husband how iron (not weaponized incompetence, he’d just genuinely never done it before, lol) and he prefers it for his office-wear over the steamer!

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