You're too kind

Mr. Stapler is incapable of sympathy. It isn't that he isn't a nice person. It's just like a language that he does not speak .

For instance: my back hurts like hell. It does, every once in a while. Especially when I sit on my butt for a week with no exercise at all, like this past week when I had The Miserable Cold.

I was supposed to go to his house tonight, 40 miles away - a long long drive with back pain.

I whined to him: "I just feel so old."

His response: "Well, you have to start taking better care of yourself when you get old."

Not "Oh, honey, I'm sorry your back hurts, and you're not that old, you are the sweet young rosebud of my dreams." Nope. Just advice mixed with what really seems like a bunch of insults rolled into one: you don't take care of yourself, you're stupid for not taking care of yourself, and you are pretty damn old.

I don't think he means it that way. Maybe.