DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I know our parents had a lot, a lot of problems in their marriage, so none of us were surprised when they got divorced. My sister and I were honestly relieved because we could see how miserable they were together.

What we didn’t know until our grandmother told us was that what caused the final breakup was our dad having an affair with the woman he is now married to. When we first met her, our father told us he had known her for about 20 years, but we thought they didn’t start going together until sometime after the divorce.

Our grandmother knows our new stepmother a long time too and told us she had run through a lot of men, some of them married like our dad.

This got us thinking that if she cheated with our dad while he was still married to our mom, what will keep her from cheating on our dad too? --- NOT A GOOD THOUGHT

DEAR NOT A GOOD THOUGHT: I’m guessing that if your father has known his new wife for a long time, it’s likely he has an idea that she’s had relationships with other men.

While it’s natural to be concerned about his future happiness, your worrying about what may or may not happen within his marriage won't accomplish anything except perhaps set up a tension between you and your new stepmother, and by extension your father.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Our youngest son still lives at home with my wife and me. He pays us rent and helps around the house whenever we need him to, so no complaints there. He saved up for a new car and decided to go with a Chevy EV. It’s a nice little SUV, but now he wants to put in a charging station here at our house. He knows we need a heavy up of our old house’s original electrical panel. He told us he would cover all the costs of the charger itself, including running a 240 outlet line out to the garage so he can put the charger in there. He said he was willing to cover half the cost of the heavy up, saying we would also benefit from the upgrade and we would have to probably do one anyway before we could sell our house if we decided to in the future.

I think it is a reasonable proposal, but my wife thinks if he wants the charger he needs to pay for everything that goes with it, including the full cost of the heavy up. She is also not thrilled with having a lithium battery being parked and recharged in our attached garage.

I can see points in what they each have to say, but how do we break the tie? I don’t want to be the one to do it. --- CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

DEAR CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE: The question that first comes to my mind is whether or not you had any intention of upgrading your electrical panel anytime soon. If not, then while I see your son’s point about mutual benefit, if you hadn’t planned for or budgeted for the expense right now, it’s an improvement that primarily only serves his purpose.

I think the three of you need to sit down and weigh the liabilities against the gains involved in your son’s scheme beyond the initial costs, including reasonable safety issues, and the inevitably higher electric bills and who’ll be responsible for those.

After covering all sides of your son’s proposal, if your wife doesn’t change her mind, then I’m afraid you’re stuck being the tiebreaker. At least you’ll hopefully have enough information to make a sound decision.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Back in the day my grandmother had a few bad experiences with mammograms. She said she was bruised after the first and second one and the third one took so long she missed her bus home and had to wait an hour for the next one.

She is now 73 and after more than 10 years since her last one her doctor wants her to get one more mammogram just to be sure everything is good.

My grandmother says she has never had any problems and none of the women in our family have a history of breast cancer, so why should she get “mauled” for nothing?

I have too many friends whose mothers and grandmothers have had or are battling breast cancer. It may not be important to my grandmother that she get screened, but it is to me.

Mammograms save lives, and I want my grandmother around for a long time.

Don’t you think she should follow her doctor’s orders? --- WANT HER SAFE

DEAR WANT HER SAFE: As you may already know, there’s nothing comfortable about a mammogram, but I agree with you that they do indeed save lives.

I checked to see what the recommended upper age for routine mammograms is and it looks like it’s currently 74.

Perhaps you can persuade your grandmother that after this one, unless something comes up to cause a doctor to order future imaging, she should be done with the test.

As a side note, someone I know who is in her 80s was diagnosed not long ago with early stage breast cancer. Hopefully your grandmother will be reminded that an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.