Comparing worries is offensive

DEAR MISS MANNERS: In an e-mail from a high school friend with whom I had only recently reconnected, he told me about his pain at seeing his daughter off at the airport as she headed for distant lands to spend a year teaching English.

He followed this with the comment that he was sure I’d understand because he knew my son had gone to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army.

My son is home safe and mostly OK. He’s been discharged with only some disability. Unfortunately, on that same day, I got e-mails from some of the women who had family in my son’s unit. One woman lost her son during that deployment. Another told me of her boy’s hearing loss and PTSD. The third told of her nephew’s struggles with recovering from severe brain trauma.

So perhaps I am just feeling a little overwrought.

It wouldn’t kill me to just ignore the comment. I know it was innocent and well meant, but it also strikes me as egregiously ignorant.

GENTLE READER: Of course you are overwrought, as how could you not be? But as you have just seen, comparisons of worries – and, for that matter, comparisons of children – are offensive.

So why should you make them?

So Miss Manners begs you to let this go if you can. And if you cannot, then please confine yourself to saying that you are grateful that your friend’s daughter will not be in harm’s way.