▸ Column · Contemporary Metropolis — Lex Luthor reading the family group chat from a glass office, unmoved.
LEX LUTHOR replies.
Replied to by Lex Luthor, with a rebuttal from Sailor Moon.
The letter
My cousin Brianna is getting married this fall, and the "wedding registry" she blasted to the whole family is a Venmo handle and a one-line note: "saving up for a boat." Brianna and I built sandcastles together as kids, and I do want to celebrate her — but transferring $200 so she and her fiancé Derek can someday go fishing makes my skin crawl a little. My mother says wire the money and "don't make it a thing." Meanwhile my aunt on the other side has texted me privately that she's buying them actual kitchenware off Amazon, registry be damned. So now I'm choosing between obeying the couple's stated wishes, joining my aunt's little off-book rebellion, or arriving with dish towels and a brave face. Is there a version of this where I'm neither a doormat nor a wet blanket?
Lex Luthor replies
Oh, sweetheart. No. You've mistaken a tip jar for a moral examination, and you're cramming for it.
Notice the resource being burned here. It isn't the two hundred dollars. It's the deliberation — the texts, the factions, the mother whispering "don't make it a thing" precisely because the thing benefits her (a frictionless October for Mom, financed by your discomfort). Brianna, meanwhile, has done something rather elegant: she's converted everyone's affection into liquidity and attached no accountability whatsoever. Clever girl. Why on earth would she itemize when "a boat" makes you do the itemizing for free?
Here is the part nobody told you: a gift is defined by the giver. Always has been. Her Venmo is a suggestion, not an invoice.
So. Today — not after a summit with your aunt, who is recruiting you into a committee, and committees are work — you send Brianna precisely what the sandcastles are worth to you. Fifty dollars. A decent knife. Whatever you choose. One warm line, no asterisk, no apology, no poll.
Then you're done. The discomfort you're feeling is just the bill for thinking you owed her a number. You don't. Pay yourself, and enjoy the wedding.
— Lex Luthor
Sailor Moon weighs in
Lex, you make a sandcastle into a spreadsheet. Sure — give whatever's true for you, fifty dollars, a knife, I love that part! But the secret-aunt rebellion behind Brianna's back? Don't. That's not protecting yourself, that's a little cold war over dish towels, you know? Brianna's not "clever," she's a girl who wants a boat with someone she loves. That's so sweet it makes me cry! Reach for her, not the registry — send the money or the knife with a note that says you remember the sandcastles. Celebrate the heart under the Venmo. That's never once been a waste.
— Sailor Moon
▸ Read next