Butterfly (DOG EAR)

Butterfly (DOG EAR)

o this brother-sister pair we know used to hang around with us a lot. They worked in my corporation and they always liked the experience of food. But not, it seemed, the experience of friendship.

We’d agree to eat in some new, trendy place and agree on a time. Knowing that these places had just opened and other foodies were flocking there, the wife and I would get there about thirty minutes early, doing the line-standing and wedging into a table. And then we’d wait. And wait. Inevitably they would be late. Thirty minutes Sixty minutes. Oh, we’d get a call (sometimes) that a meeting was going long (after hours) or they had to run home and get something. Of course. So in something like sixty to ninety minutes, they’d come dragging in.

Of course, for the long period that we sat and sipped our overpriced drinks, we’d be getting glares from all the people standing in the doorway, waiting for a table to open up (like our table (the one not being used)). One time we did this and they came in, had a look at the place and decided we needed to go somewhere else. That, after an hour sit.

Look, I know what this is. I shouldn’t have accepted it the first time. Or the second. But I always did. On me, all the way. But I was harboring a growing resentment to being the second-hand, last-choice friend.

They’ve been working overseas, sending us postcards about how they really wanted to meet up again after the holidays. I feel very cool to the prospect. But finally one of them called a few weeks back and we set up a dinner this evening. Fine.

Of course (and as always), right after that, a good friend and his wife announced that they were hosting a model train ops session at their house. I love to go to his sessions, and my wife even comes. She likes the wife there and they run the main yard together. My wife actually enjoys those days, working with her counterpart while I run the entire railroad from a massive CTC (Centralized Traffic Control) board. But we had to decline – we’d agreed to another commitment.

In the weeks to follow, the crew call couldn’t quite bring in the numbers (JB and I would have brought it up to a correct staffing) and the guy called the session off. I felt terrible about that. It’s like I caused it. In a way, I did.

And then, this night, the very night we’d have had the session, the siblings didn’t call us. No dinner. I’d even left a message two days ago and got nothing back. Yes, they stood us up.

And that’s the butterfly effect. Because I didn’t say no when they should have, they pulled the same shit and it cost us a fun train session and a gathering of friends at the post-session dinner (everything the silly dinners with them wasn’t).

Of course my wife has been attempting to temper my response, saying how maybe something came up, an unexpected event, something like that. I call bullshit to that – we live in a world of instantaneous communications. It isn’t 1970. You don’t need to find a pay phone and dig out some quarters, even look in a big phone book. You can pull your phone out of your pocket and call anyone anywhere in the world. You can even text (if you are sitting in the emergency room) and weakly type “cant come”. Especially if I contacted you two days out and you had two days to reply.

So yes, we’re done with them. Next time they call, it’s a hard pass. It was my fault to let it get to this point, to be doormatted over and over, but we’ve concluded that it’s a fool’s game. It cost us a great day and some good times. And I won’t miss being “trendy”.

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