Dear Old Guy welcomes letters on all subjects, including love, marriage, child rearing, even basic plumbing and medical advice. What he doesn’t know, he is happy to make up. After all, he’s just an opinionated Old Guy.

Submit your questions to Dear Old Guy here.

Dear Old Guy,

My father, who recently had a stroke, will be coming to live with my family. He is partially disabled and will need his own room, which leaves my 10 year-old daughter, Daisy, living on the couch. She hasn’t complained but….

                                 Signed, One room short

Dear One Room,

Have Daisy redecorate the living room…. Do whatever it takes to make the space feel like it’s hers, even if that means putting up a Justin Beaver poster and slipcovers made of leopard print. Then, as long as your father has to live with you, treat the living room as your daughter’s personal space. But wait! Why is your father getting Daisy’s room? Seems backwards to me. —O.G.

 Dear Old Guy,

 Are you in support of gay marriage? Can you give a reason?

                           Signed Father Pat

Dear Father,

Anybody who thinks gay marriage is a bad thing should take a look at what is going on with traditional marriage. Not so good. And when I hear the claim that marriage’s purpose is to procreate and make children what about all the married couples who don’t want or can’t have children. Should we keep then from getting married? What about people who are past child-bearing years? While we’re at it let’s ban them from getting married. I say live and let live and if you don’t want to see gay couples getting married then change the channel. —O.G.

Dear Old Guy,

Are you "from away"?

        Signed Maine-iac

Dear Maine-iac,

Am I from away? Aim I from away? The short answer is, I don’t know. The long answer is —  I don’t know.

When I was six I was found wandering the streets of a little know town up north called Amscroginacook. Don’t look on a map. It isn’t there anymore. I had amnesia and since my parents never came forward I went to the care of Miss Agatha Applegate, a nice elderly woman who lost her son in the war, though she never said which war, exactly. She took good care of me until I was old enough to work in the mill. It was a hard life and I never did find out what we made. I do recall it was my job to carry sacks of manure to the icehouse. As least that’s what I was doing the day they fired me.

After that, I wandered until I found Boston. It seemed like magic and when I caught my first glimpse of Cambridge I knew there was no choice but to attend college. I worked day and night and saved until I had had squirreled enough away for the application fee. Unfortunately, just then the Japanese got it in there heads to attack Pearl Harbor and off to war I went. Because I was a college applicant I was qualified to work as a messenger in the State Department in Washington. Soon I was hobnobbing with the elite of the intelligence community. That allowed me, when the war ended, to get a job with the F.B.I. and ultimately the N.S.A., monitoring calls.

Well, you can imagine my frustration listening in to all sorts of  personal problems and having to remain silent when I felt I had so much to offer.

That brings me to present day. When I finally retired last year and moved back to Maine I decided to be an advice columnist. That way rather than just having to helplessly listen to personal affairs I could interfere with my own two cents. I’d like to write more just now but I hear the doctor coming with my medications. They always make you take them just before lights out here at the institution. I hope I’ve answered your question. —O.G.