Tag Archives: Friends

That’s what I’m here for man

Please, no need to thank me. Of course I didn’t mind picking you up at three in the morning. You were drinking. What were you supposed to do, drive home? Take a cab? Those taxis are such a rip-off. Not drink so much? Please, what’s the point of going out if you can’t knock a few back. I mean, I wasn’t doing anything. Which worked out perfectly, because I’m here for you man. Let me know, any time, you’re my friend.

Of course I can help you move next Saturday. I’m great at helping people move. Wait, are you asking me to come help lift large items into a truck or do you want me to swing by and actually pack? Both? Yeah, of course that’s fine. That’s why people call me up when they’re moving, because I’m great at it. The best. Of course I have extra boxes and tape. And if we need more I know exactly where we can get some. Sure, yeah, I guess I can just swing by on my way over and pick up some more. Because, yeah, you’re right, it’ll be much easier if I just go myself and save you a trip. Because, please, you’re moving. Moving sucks. You’ve got a lot on your plate, a huge headache.

Yeah let’s totally get together this Friday. Yeah that’s a great idea, let’s all meet up at my place. Yeah I have a ton of leftover beer from last time. I mean, I don’t have as much as I did last time, because we all drank a lot of it, but there is definitely some left over. I could just pick up some more. You guys will throw me a couple of bucks, right? Right, I remember you telling me about that cleaning service last time, but it just seems so expensive. Especially because it’s just us hanging out. Well, how many other people were you thinking of inviting? Well, wouldn’t we need a lot more beer than last time for that type of a party? Yeah, you’re right, I’m sure everybody will bring something, and … no, when you compare it like that, the number of people coming to how much the cleaning service costs, I guess it’s not that bad.

You need a guarantor for your new apartment? I don’t know man, that sounds like a lot of commitment. No, I know you’re good for your rent. But I just feel a little uncomfortable signing my name onto something like that. Because what if you lose your job? No, I know you’re doing OK. I’m not trying to say that … what about your parents, could they sign? They said no? Why? Well, I mean, it kind of matters a little why, to me, especially because you’re asking me to put my finances on the line. Right? And if your parents said no I should at least know why they said no.

Because, I don’t know, I have my own expenses to worry about. Well, yeah, I guess I could lend you five hundred bucks. Yeah, no, I really don’t want to cosign on your apartment. Fine, fine I’ll commit to the five hundred. But you’re good for it, right? Like how long until you’ll be able to get it back to me? Well, when is your cousin supposed to be in touch with you? Well, when is this guy’s company supposed to get up and running? Full-time associate you say? Yeah, that does sound pretty legit. Still, I’d feel more comfortable if … no, you’re right, none of us can accurately predict the future. It’s just that …

Why would you need my social security number? Can’t I just give you five hundred cash? Well then can’t I just fill out the paperwork and send it in myself? I’ve never heard of any bank that insists on anybody personally handing in all of this information, especially for such a small loan. Can I come with you at least? Maybe talk to the banker? Why not? What do you mean not technically a bank? This is all getting to be a little more than I’m really comfortable with.

Yeah I have a Zip Car. No you can’t use it. What do you mean you already used it? Did you return it? No, you have to return it as soon as you’re done with it. They charge by the hour. Because they don’t know if it’s available to rent again unless you tell them. Two days ago. You just took the card out of my wallet. Listen, I know you’re moving, but you can rent a U-Haul for a whole day for like significantly less than what it costs for me to rent a Prius by the hour. Wait a second, please don’t tell me you tried to get furniture in that thing. Jesus. Of course they’re going to be able to link it back to me.

No, yeah, no you’re right. Yeah, I’d do it for you I guess. Just, just let me know next time. Yeah, I’ll still sign. I mean, we’re friends, right? Just, just next time you all go out drinking, just give me a call, I’m always down. No, I won’t even drink. I’ll still be good to be your DD. I know a lot of times I’m sleeping when it’s that late, but only because I don’t have anything to do, so if you call me, I’ll be up and out. Yeah, totally, and no, I really appreciate you not wanting to disturb me, but we’re bros, right? Yeah, you’re not disturbing me, you’re not imposing at all. I mean, what are friends for?

I’m telling you, everything happens for a reason

Everything happens for a reason. Like that time I stepped in dog shit. I was really pissed off, grossed out. I didn’t feel like cleaning it off. So I said goodbye to those shoes. I said, “So long shoes!” and I threw them in the trash, somebody else’s trashcan, obviously. Garbage pickup isn’t until Tuesday, and I didn’t want to worry about accidentally forgetting that those shoes were in there, and then I’d go to take out some garbage or something and I would open up the lid and just be overwhelmed with, well, I don’t have to get in to actually describing how terrible that would have been. What if I was right about to enjoy a nice snack? And right before I’m about to chow down, I’m like, hmm. Maybe I should take out the garbage? And I do that, and that scenario that I just described winds up unfolding. And I’m just so disgusted now. My appetite’s gone. I go sit down to my snack, but I’m just really not into it anymore. I’m not into snacking right then. I’m not into anything. I have this scowl like etched onto my face. And so my snack just goes to waste. Obviously I can’t just leave the snack out to go bad, but I don’t want to make another trip out to the garbage can, so I don’t do anything, which is actually the same thing as leaving the snack out to go bad. And it gets really bad. But, like I said, trash day isn’t until Tuesday. So then maybe the next day one of my friends comes over. And maybe I’m in the shower when this friend comes over. And I hear the doorbell ring, so I just jump out of the shower real quick, still soapy and everything, but I can’t just leave him outside to wait for me to finish up. So I run downstairs all soapy but covered with a towel, I unlock the door and give a really quick “Hey!” but I start running upstairs right away, because I’m dripping and making a huge soapy puddle everywhere I go. I say, “I’ll be out in a second! Make yourself at home!” which is always a nice thing to say. I hate when you go over somebody’s house and it’s clear that they don’t want you to make yourself at home. They might as well be saying, “Don’t make yourself at home. Respect the rules of a good houseguest.” Like you have to take your shoes off before stepping foot inside. I always hate this rule, because what if somebody spills a little drop of soda on the floor? Or one potato chip? And then when you step on it, now you’ve got a wet spot on the bottom of your sock. Or a crushed up potato chip. And even though you do your best to clean it up, there are still potato chip crumbs stuck in there somewhere. If you were just wearing shoes, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Or, there’s the other end of the spectrum, where whoever’s house your at has a great carpet, like super plush, shag carpeting. And not only do you want to take your shoes off, but you want to take your socks off. You want to get as undressed as you can without making the situation awkward and you want to just roll around in the soft carpeting, feeling totally comfortable, very, very plush, like I said. But your host gives you a face as you start to untie your shoe, and you get the hint, so you retie it, make it like you weren’t going to take off your shoes, you were just making the knot a little tighter. Whatever, the host saw right through it. But you know that the host is doing exactly what you wish you could be doing when he’s by himself. Just moving all of the furniture out of the room so it’s just the carpet, that beautiful, plush, luxurious shag carpeting, and he’s just rolling around in it, back and forth, every part of his body touching every inch of carpeting, back and forth. And he gets up and his whole body is charged with positive particles, and he can feel them. He’s feeling like turbocharged, not just from the comfort, but from all of those ions and that static electricity. And he drags his feet over across the carpeting right to the doorknob, and he touches it. And it’s this huge spark, like, ”ZZZZAP!” like it’s such a big shock he can smell it, he can smell the charged air, and it’s just everything you would possibly imagine that to be like. But I’m a good host. When I say, “Make yourself at home brah,” I’m serious. And my guest knows I’m serious, that I’m not just saying it to be pleasant. I’m like do whatever you want here. And he goes to the fridge and grabs a drink and he takes a look at my old snack which is still just sitting there, it’s been sitting there for days, a nice cheese plate maybe, and he starts chowing down. But it’s cheese, so you really can’t tell if it’s bad or not. You’re like, “Hmm … this cheese sure tastes extra fancy.” And then he gets really sick, like really sick. And he’s going to throw up, but he doesn’t want to throw up in the house, so he runs outside and opens up the lid to the trashcan, with those dirty sneakers still just sitting there, and he’s overcome with the stench, and it’s too much, and he dies. And it’s all my fault. That’s why when I step in something, I just throw out my shoes in someone else’s trashcan. Or a public trashcan. But usually someone else’s, because those public trashcans fill up so fast, and there’re just piles of litter not in the trashcan, but sitting right next to it. I got a new pair of sneakers. They’re blue. I keep getting compliments on how awesome they are. I’m eating a snack right now. It’s fucking delicious. I told you, everything happens for a reason.

Wrong number

I’m so lonely. Nobody ever calls me anymore. I used to get telephone calls all the time. But then text messaging came around. I used to just ignore all incoming text messages, but eventually they became so ubiquitous that it wasn’t enough to simply ignore them. I had to at least acknowledge them, or my phone kept beeping, it was such an annoying feature, and there would be this number on the home screen representing all of my unread texts. But I refused to text back. Any time somebody sent me a text message, I would immediately call that person and start a real-life conversation. This only lasted for a little bit, because people got annoyed and stopped answering my phone calls all together. Group text messages were the worst. I’d see that I’m one of like eight or nine people receiving a message, and there’s just not enough time in the day to call each one of them back, wait for each one of them to ignore my call, listen to each person’s wildly out of date voicemail message, and then leave a voicemail message on each person’s inbox. I’m just kidding. I don’t really know eight or nine people.

So I’ll hear my ringtone and get really excited. Unfortunately it’s usually this spam robot from Washington State telling me I’ve just won a cruise. I hate it so much. I see the area code and my brain is screaming, “Rob! Don’t pick it up! Rob! Listen to me Rob! Do not answer that phone call! You will be so pissed when you answer it, say hello, and then there’s going to be that delay, and then you’ll think maybe nobody’s there, but then you’ll hear that terrible recording of the cruise horn, and you’ll try to turn off the phone before you have to hear that other recording, the guy who sounds like the moviefone guy saying, ‘This is your cruise captain! You’ve just won a cruise!’ So don’t pick it up!” But I always pick it up. What if it’s one of my long-lost friends who has since moved to Washington State? Why would I take a chance on missing out on such a great conversation? Catching up on old times, reminiscing about all the trouble we used to get into back in the day. I’m just kidding. I’ve never been in any trouble.

If the call isn’t from Washington State, nine times out of ten it’s going to be a wrong number. I used to hate wrong numbers. I’d be like, “No this isn’t Hank! Get your numbers together buddy!” But now I love wrong numbers. Whenever I get a call from a wrong number, I always try to keep the caller on the line for as long as possible. Like I said, super lonely. Now I’m always like, “Hello?” and the other person will say, “Hank?” and I’ll say, “Hank here! How can I help you?” and the other person will continue, “Hank? Is that you? You sound different.” So maybe I’ll try to alter my voice just a little bit. I used to alter it dramatically, which would immediately send an alert to the caller that I’m not who I say I am, so I now I just alter it slightly. Maybe I’ll make it a little more nasally or maybe like half an octave higher or lower. Most of this time they still catch on, but maybe I’ll have extended the conversation by a minute or two. “Hank? Do you have a cold?” And I’ll say, “Yeah, that’s it. A cold. Right. I have a cold.” But they’ll be thinking, “Who says, ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ in real life? It’s so obvious that this person is jerking me around.”

What started out as a desperate longing for any sort of human conversation has now turned into more of a personal challenge. How long can I keep a complete stranger on the phone that has called me by mistake? So when I get one of these calls, someone will be like, “Is Laura there?” I’ll always immediately say, “Yeah, hold on, one second, I’ll go get Laura,” and then I put down the phone for a while. All this really does is inflate the time, but that’s all I’m after now, to break my previous record. I’ve found the sweet spot of this waiting period to be about four minutes. Anything more than that and the caller is going to look at their watch, and then look at the phone, and they’ll probably realize that they typed in the wrong number and they’ll hang up, that’s it. But once you’ve made somebody wait for four minutes, it’s unlikely that you’ll get them to stay on any longer, even if you pick up the phone and start talking again.

What you have to do is make them wait like three minutes, and then you pick up the phone again and start talking in a different voice, maybe like a little kid’s voice. And you say something like, “Hello? Who is this?” and the person will go “Laura?” and then you say, “Hold on, she’s right here.” Then you put down the phone and you take a few steps away and you scream out, “Laura!” and then you run up the stairs, making sure you’re still in earshot of the phone and you scream out, in your best girl’s voice, “What?” Then you run back downstairs, “Phone call!” Upstairs. “Who is it?” Then you run back to the phone and get a different little kid’s voice ready. “Who’s calling please?” And they might say, “It’s Trish.” And you do this back and forth until you’re back at the top of the stairs and you say, “Tell Trish I’ll be there in a second!”

I once got someone to wait for twenty-one minutes and twelve seconds. But that’s been by far my longest call. My second longest is only around thirteen minutes. I never get higher than thirteen or fourteen. Actually, the twenty-one minute call, I think, was a mistake, because the other person must have been equally as lonely as I am, because he has my number now, this guy from Wisconsin, this real wacko, and he’s calling me like three or four times a day. Whenever I’m out with my friends, I’ll get these calls from this guy, and I always have to answer and pretend like it’s a wrong number, and we always wind up playing tricks on each other. Sometimes I think that he has his own little challenge with himself, like how long can he keep me on the line. I’m just kidding. I don’t have any friends.

What a nice day for a picnic

I hosted a big picnic in the park last week for all of my friends and family. I’ve always wanted to host a picnic. I feel like nobody does picnics anymore. You never see people carrying around picnic baskets. Nobody talks about picnics on Facebook. Even now, in just three sentences of this first paragraph, I feel like I’ve used the word picnic more than I’ve ever used it in the rest of my life. The picnic, I feel, is in danger of becoming extinct, and I was going to save it by hosting my own picnic. Let me just tell you, it was the worst event I’ve ever even hosted, a huge disaster. Nothing could have possibly been a worse idea.

Everybody had a huge problem with the chain of command. If I host a party at my place, then I’m in charge. Whenever people come over, I like to constantly reinforce this fact by bossing people around, but only slightly, just to kind of, you know, say without saying it, hey, I’m in charge. This is my party. I’ll be like, “Hey, George, would you mind using a coaster?” or “Steve, didn’t I tell everyone to take their shoes off at the front door?” And what are people going to do, start something with me? No, I make sure that all of my rules or so tiny as to not be worth getting into a fight over. It’s much easier to just go along with it. It is my house, after all, and I’m the host.

I thought that it would be the same with picnics, but it wasn’t. I had it at a public park, so I guess people got it into their heads that they didn’t have to listen to me anymore. But I was still the host, right? I’d be like, “Andre, didn’t I ask that all of the picnic blankets be laid out vertically?” and Andre was just like, “Well, yeah, but I wanted to lay out my blanket horizontally.” And then he just kind of shrugged at me and put his hands up halfway in the air, saying to me something like, what are you going to do?

So I got in Andre’s face and reminded him that I was the host. I started to move his blanket myself, but he just picked it up and stormed off. Fine, I didn’t want him at my picnic anyway. That guy’s a total loser. Fucking Andre. I shouldn’t even have invited him in the first place. I sent out all of the invitations on Facebook, and this guy had the nerve to respond with a “maybe.” Maybe? Maybe I should have rescinded his invitation right then and there. But I didn’t, because I’m a nice guy. But he just showed up anyway, without even bothering to change his RSVP to “Attending.” I checked on the picnic’s Facebook page a little later, and this time Andre changed it to “Not Attending.” What a big man, rubbing it in my face. I defriended him later in the day. And then the next day I refriended him, because I knew he’d accept it. And he did. And then I defriended him again. I’m telling you, that guy is a huge loser.

Then some other people took out this badminton set and started putting it up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I told them while I confiscated the rackets that they had put over to the side while they were busy setting up the net. “Activities aren’t until later, and we’re not playing badminton, we’re playing kickball.” They were getting upset. I was getting upset. Actually, I wasn’t getting upset, I already was upset. I must have still been upset from that little tussle I had with Andre. They argued with me. I kept talking over everybody. Somebody tried to chase after me, to get back the rackets, but I’m the fastest runner out of all of my friends, so it was pointless. I’d let them get kind of close, let them think that they were about to catch me, but then I’d take off, really getting ahead of them. Then I’d pretend that I used up all of my energy on that sprint, and make it like I was out of breath. And they’d come up all charging at me, thinking they had me finally, but right before they could catch me, I’d take off again. In the end I just threw the rackets in the giant fountain in the middle of the park.

So they started undoing the badminton set. I thought I had won, but they were being such babies that they packed up and left. Good. I don’t know why I ever invited those jerks in the first place. That’s all your going to contribute to the picnic? A stupid baby tennis set? Take a hike. I told everyone else to get to work setting up the grill. They asked me where I had put the charcoal. I told them that I didn’t bring any charcoal, that was Denise’s job. Denise claimed she didn’t know she was supposed to bring any charcoal. It was right on the Facebook page, a link to the web site I had set up for the picnic. There was an excel spreadsheet that you were supposed to download to find out what you were supposed to bring. It turns out nobody downloaded it. Nobody brought anything on the list. People just brought whatever they wanted. I was so pissed. I told everybody that they were all uninvited from the picnic. And you know what? I told them, you’re not even uninvited. You were never invited in the first place. Invitation annulled. And you know what else? Picnic’s cancelled. Go home. Thanks a lot everybody. Thanks for nothing.

Then my phone buzzed. I looked down. It was an email. The email was from Facebook. It was a notification about a picnic. The picnic was being organized by Andre. I clicked on the link. “Hey everyone! Let’s have a picnic! Right now! Right over here, to your left! Bring whatever you want!” I look to my left and Andre was standing on the other side of the park, waving everybody over. Fucking Andre. That guy is such a poser. Always stealing my great ideas. I opened up the Facebook app and went to the picnic page and clicked on my RSVP, “Not Attending.” As I packed up my stuff and headed out to leave, I looked up and everyone was walking over to Andre’s picnic, those traitors, those fair-weather friends, and someone else took off their shoes and waded into the fountain and got the badminton rackets, and someone else was setting up the net.

I thought about calling up the cops and telling them that a group of people was loitering in the park, drinking alcohol out of concealed containers, and was that marijuana smoke I was smelling? But I decided against it. I’ll be the bigger person here. But by the time I got home I was so pissed all over again that I actually did call the cops. And I told them that a group of extremists was planning a terrorist attack in the park. Then I went on facebook and wrote a status update, “Anybody else hear about that failed terrorist attack in the park?”