When making plans
with someone, nothing takes the wind out of your social sails like a
cancellation. Especially, when it’s an abrupt one. When does a cancellation go
from reasonable to rude?
Last summer, an
acquaintance of mine from college, asked me out. If I’d looked over our
previous Facebook messages, I’d have seen this coming, but I’d been busy. When
he asked me, I figured it would be a nice outing between colleagues. I wasn’t
expecting anything serious. Witty banter over dinner never killed anyone,
right? He’s younger than me so, I saw no real promise in the date. Nonetheless,
we set up a date for the coming Saturday and exchanged numbers.
That Friday
night, I decided to shoot Lachlan a text. I always like to follow up when I
have plans with someone. Plus, I had sneaky suspicion.
“What’s up?” I
texted.
“I’m sick,” He
texted back.
Seriously, I
thought to myself. Who did he think he was kidding? I’d hoped he wouldn’t live
up to trend of inconsistency that most men in my generation do, but as expected
he did.
I’m no fool. I
knew what actually happened.
1.
He really was sick. (Ha!)
2.
He double booked. (I’ve been guilty myself. It’s
called time management and you make it work.)
3.
He decided to binge watch a show or some other millennial
excuse.
Either way, I
wasn’t amused. So I texted back, “Some other time.”
Let me explain
what that meant. If we weren’t acquaintances in the same social set, I would
have texted him to get hit by a train, but I figured I’d be civil and never
engage him socially so long as we both live. I did, however delete his phone
number. I saw no need to keep wasting my phone’s memory. When Saturday came, I
looked at an art exhibition, took myself to lunch and got a pedicure. Why waste
the day?
Days later as I
was on my way to run a quick errand, I got a text. It read: “What are you up
to?” I didn’t recognize the number. I texted back, “Who is this?”
A few seconds
passed before the mystery texter answered back.
The text read: “Oh
man. It’s Lachlan.”
I was annoyed. I’m
not Johnny on the spot. We had plans, he cancelled them. Sorry, Charlie. My
time is valuable. Not my problem.
I shot back, “Oh.
I’m on my way out.”
“Ok. LOL,” he
texted back. I have reason to believe there was no laughing out loud involved.
When plans are
made, each party need to be considered in the planning. If plans need to be
cancelled, you should still be respectful of other people’s time whether it’s
serious or not.
