I have this friend who is one of the most blatant of users I’ve ever met. Not “user” as in drugs, but as in using people. When I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, it was expected that all of us would drop everything for the weekends leading up to the main event and help with her hand-made dress. I thought it was weird that she didn’t even ask if any of us was available, she just said “Hey, we’re working on the dress this Sunday” like it was assumed nobody had anything else to do.
At the time, I assumed this was because she was stressed out about the wedding and I actually didn’t know her very well before I was asked to be in it. However, that was not the end of it… there was the later assumption that I would cat sit when she and her husband went out of town and the expectation that everyone at a holiday event bring gifts. My boyfriend and I at the time weren’t even exchanging presents, so he stayed home rather than deal with it and I went, only to find out that she had bought a present for me to “contribute.” Rather than making me feel better, it actually made me feel like shit and her acting like a Christmas Nazi was the point where I really began to see her true colors.
A local museum found out about her unique wedding and wanted her dress (along with a bridesmaid’s outfit) to contribute to an exhibit about weddings that they were doing. I was the only bridesmaid that still had my outfit and at the time I had no problem with it being borrowed. The exhibit went on for a long time, but I found out that my dress was only used for photos for the exhibit booklet. After months of e-mailing, I finally got the contact info for the person at the museum that I could see about getting my belongings back.
Since they weren’t actually being used, I didn’t feel comfortable having them laying around where something could happen to them and it had been over 6 months by then. At the time, they also gave me a few unused belongings of my friend’s to return to her and it has now been over a year since I’ve seen her. I’ve contacted her multiple times about it and finally stepped it up a month ago where I bug her before every weekend to find out when she’s coming to get them.
After having her things for so long, it feels like an imposition for her to expect me to hang onto them any longer. I have explained that I’m moving soon and getting rid of a lot of stuff, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The only nice thing she has ever done for me is invite me to Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years ago… I can’t even get her to reply to simple one-line question e-mails most of the time. I really just want her to get her shit so that I can be done with her.
I chose the city over the boy.
Friend Quote of the Week:
“This is what I love about her.. she TAGS!”
Dear Threadless,
After nearly 5 years together, I think we’ve drifted apart. You used to make me feel special when we were out in public together, but I’m starting to realize that you’re also with every other boy and girl in the city. (You whore!) I’m sorry, but the magic is gone and I’ve found someone else that makes me feel special again.
I’m sure we will be very happy together, but thanks for memories…
Love, Me
Last time I went out-of-town to visit family, I got a glimpse of what I’d be like as a parent. A bunch of people were over for my niece’s 4th birthday and she was getting into something she wasn’t supposed to. My mom told her to put it away 3 times, but nobody made a move to enforce this and her parents were in another room. So I stood up and said:
“Hey! How would you like your Auntie to beat your ass for the first time?”
I removed the camera from around my neck, put it on a shelf, and started to walk over to her. She put that shit away before I even had to touch her. *smirk*
Every college has one… that guy who seems to be at every party and who takes twice as long to graduate as everyone else. Best of all, he usually has a mascot-like name and his presence at social functions is seen as an honor so he never pays for booze. At the university I attended, that man was known as Animal.
Animal had this tradition of sitting in a corner at a party with a beer-filled metal bucket. He never seemed to leave his spot unless it was to go to another party and being the royalty that he was, people were always more than happy to get his bucket filled for him. Nobody seemed to know much about who he really was, but there were rumors about how he’d been in school for 10 years or someone had ordered a pizza and he was the one who delivered it.
I graduated from college over 10 years ago, but he’s the sort of person you don’t forget even though you hardly knew him. On the rare occasion that I still swap college drinking stories with friends, Animal always gets a mention. I don’t even know his real name, but he gets brought up in those conversations more often than even the people who I considered close friends at the time.
I know that I talked to him on a few occasions and while I remember that he was nice, I was too shit-faced to remember what we actually talked about. I also know that I made several beer-bucket runs for him, especially at places were I knew the people throwing the party and could cut in line. Usually all I had to do was hold the bucket up and they knew who it was for. Yes, I was a “bucket bitch.”
I recently created a new account on MySpace and unlike the old one, this time I listed what college I went to. Just today, I got a friend request from THE Animal himself and I felt like I’d been blessed by the Pope.
As usual, Violent Acres and I agree on one of the many ways that people can be morons. Being a frequent rider of public transportation, I almost always have headphones on to tune out the crazy homeless people and get a few minutes of zone-out time on the way to and from work. I used to always be the person that strangers asked for the time and it drove me nuts. I guess there are worse things than seeming like an approachable human being, but when I’m wearing headphones I wrongly assumed that everyone knew that it was the international signal for “PISS OFF.”
So I quit wearing a watch. Now when someone points to their wrist and mouths “What time is it?”, I just point to my blank wrist, shrug, and look at them like the dumbass they are… all without removing my headphones.
Last week, my horoscope at the Onion was the best yet:
“If there’s a drinkable liquid in the world that doesn’t cause loss of motor function, impaired judgment, slurred speech, dehydration, and eventual unconsciousness, you don’t want to know about it.”
Yep, that about sums it up.
I think I’ve gotten to a point where I just assume that all straight men are misogynists like I am. On the way back from lunch yesterday, two male co-workers and I were talking about a female co-worker who annoys the shit out of everyone because she is in hysterics 99.9% of the time. I started off a sentence about her with: “She just needs to…”
CHOKE ON A DICK
and caught myself just in time to end it with “shut up.” I’m pretty sure what I was originally going to say would’ve offended at least one of the male co-workers, so it’s a good thing I managed to watch my mouth for once.
I’ve had not one, but TWO cab drivers hit on me and give me their phone number in the past week. WTF?