Friendship Down

Newsletter 2024-04-28

I don’t know how to lose a guy in ten days, but I can end a friendship almost instantly. The key is to be myself. I tested out that theory in a series of social blunders this month that, in another era, would have led to me being exiled from civilization. But this is modern times, and I instead have a huge social media platform to share all the reasons I continue to be the worst. God bless 2024.

The problem started, as it usually does, when I tried to dump one of my kids on other people. My thirteen-year-old, Betsy, needed service hours for one of the ten thousand activities she’s in. Our friends Peter and Delilah volunteer at a local charity on certain Saturdays. We had already planned to be at their house Friday evening to play games. Delilah offered to have Betsy spend the night and then go with her and Peter to the charity the next morning. Betsy was immediately on board. Anything she gets to do that her sisters don’t counts as a treasured experience. The key to a good time is being able to lord it over your biological frenemies. I thought it was an excellent plan, too, because it would save me roughly an hour of back-and-forth driving. Ninety-five percent of my life is transporting the kids to different places. The other five percent is sleeping. There is no greater gift you can give me than to haul my offspring in my stead. Not all heroes wear capes, but they do have a driver’s licenses.

Naturally, after Delilah offered me a small favor, I asked for an even bigger one. I think that’s how that’s supposed to work. Lola and I planned to drive to my hometown in Illinois the next day for the annual trivia night at my old elementary school. Betsy didn’t want to go with us since she had a school dance that night. A few months ago, she told me school dances were dumb and no cool people went, but this spring the cool people had a change of heart and dances are back in. Popular kids are harder to predict than Midwestern weather. Today it was warm, tomorrow will be a blizzard, and the day after that will be a plague of frogs and locusts. I told Betsy she could stay in our town without us if she arranged to have a sleepover at a friend’s house. I needed Delilah and Peter to take Betsy back to our suburb after she was done volunteering so we could foist her on yet another family. I mostly parent by delegating. Delilah agreed to those terms. After successfully stacking all those favor requests, I thought I had all my ducks in a row. They were actually in an unruly mob. Welcome to the mallard mosh pit. 

Saturday, Lola, I, and two of the girls were hanging out at my parents’ house (The fourth kid was at a scout campout. We’re only all in the same place once or twice a fortnight.) when I got an alert on my phone. Peter and Delilah were on our front porch in Indiana so Betsy could pick up her sleepover gear. That’s when I remembered that I owed Delilah money, even though she would never, ever ask for it. Our respective households swap enough meals that it’s impossible to track who owes what to who. I order Domino’s for our game nights every Wednesday. Not only is it the cheapest fast food option available, but I use coupons on the website and stack them with discount gift cards I buy through Costco, making it as cheap as possible without actually robbing the restaurant. In return, Peter makes us delicious home-cooked meals from scratch that take him entire days to put together. Clearly, this is an equal exchange of value. That Friday night, though, we deviated from our normal tit-for-tat by ordering Chinese food. When I saw Delilah through my porch’s doorbell camera Saturday, I remembered that I hadn’t chipped in for my crew. I used Paypal to send her money. Then I also recalled that she fed Betsy lunch. Delilah had sent Lola and me a picture of the trendy burger joint they went to. I made a second transaction and sent her money for that, too. In the memo lines, I put that the first payment was for Chinese food and the second was for Betsy’s hipster restaurant lunch. I thought I was being a good friend and settling my debts. Little did I know I was starting the countdown for a conventional faux pas to go nuclear.

Photo by Mgg Vitchakorn on Unsplash

Delilah texted to ask why I kept sending her money. Obviously she was being sarcastic. I explained the purpose in the memo lines. I decided to be sarcastic back. I replied, “You looked poor.” I don’t know how anyone could possibly misinterpret that. That’s a horrible thing to say to a stranger and possibly a bad thing to say to a friend, but it’s a completely okay thing to say to Delilah because she makes more money than the rest of us. She has enough cash on hand to buy most of my family. That’s an estimate since no one will give me a firm appraisal of our value. The authorities tend to frown on it if you list your children on the open market. My line for what is and isn’t okay to say someone might be a little miscalibrated. I thought it was clear I was joking, but also I tell (and write) a lot of jokes that don’t really land. That’s the difference between a humor writer and a stand-up comedian. I expect to get nothing back but awkward silences no matter how good or bad my comments are. When I didn’t hear from Delilah after that, I didn’t think anything of it. After all, I had a grade school trivia match to lose.

Two weeks later, Lola and I were back at Peter and Delilah’s house. The topic of payment apps came up. My brother-in-law Jerry was ranting about how there’s no reason for Venmo to exist since it’s just PayPal, but with oversharing. I’m ashamed enough of my financial decisions without turning them into a community spectacle. That’s when Delilah brought up the money again. She wanted to know why I kept sending it to her that one day. I was confused why she was confused. I insisted that she knew exactly why I sent it to her. She rebutted that I just said she looked poor. I thought that was pretty self-explanatory. Obviously it meant nothing close to the literal meeting of the words. Do words even have meanings? Not according to any English literature class I’ve ever taken. The whole point of symbolism is to invent your own interpretation and pretend that’s what the original author actually meant. Language is a game where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. There’s a reason I didn’t major in a hard science.

Then we had the big reveal. Delilah never opened the app to see the memo line, so she actually didn’t know what either payment was for. She also didn’t pay for the Chinese food. It was Peter. They have separate bank accounts, which is probably why they never fight. She’s super rich and had to protect herself in case Peter was just marrying her for her money. That last sentence may or may not be sarcasm. Given all the linguistic ambiguity so far, it’s impossible to say. Because I sent my comment about her looking poor when she was in front of the doorbell camera, and because she lacked all other context, she thought I was actually critiquing her outfit. For the record, I have no idea what she had on. I never notice anyone’s clothes. If I closed my eyes, I couldn’t tell you what I’m wearing right now. Delilah spent the next two weeks wondering why I was judging her wardrobe. I delivered a pretend insult that turned into a real insult and then festered for half a month without anyone bringing it into the open. To her, I had done the equivalent of telling her her ensemble looked cheap and then throwing a wad of crumpled up dollar bills in her face. That’s how friendships implode. If it hadn’t come up randomly again during an unrelated conversation about Venmo, that one stray comment could have grown like cancer over time. Eventually, Delilah and Peter would have stopped responding to our invitations. Then, after years of no contact, I might have bumped into Peter randomly at the store. I’d ask him why we never saw them anymore, and he’d say he didn’t know, even though he knew exactly why and would assume that I knew, too. I would, of course, be as oblivious as ever. Ignorance is bliss and also the great destroyer of relationships. Hire me if you have a treasured friend you want to get rid of. 

The best part of the story is that, after I delivered what seemed like a very deliberate insult, Peter and Delilah didn’t immediately disown me. I must be pretty awesome if that wasn’t a deal breaker. Perhaps I can get away with saying even more terrible things to people’s faces. The only downside is I can’t afford to keep sending money to emphasize my verbal barbs. I’m not in Delilah’s tax bracket. My approach can’t work on its own, though. In addition to a cash supplement, it requires a lack of technological awareness by one or both parties to add to the confusion. If Delilah had simply clicked on the link to my random payments, this wouldn’t have been a story. Really, this is all her fault and I’m completely blameless, as always. That’s the perfect attitude to have if you want to die alone.

The real moral of the story is that I shouldn’t make flippant comments. That’s a tough ask because those make up ninety percent of my personality. If I wasn’t delivering playful jabs, I’d basically have to take a vow of silence. Many people might prefer that, namely my wife. Human interactions are complicated. To make society work, it’s important to treat others with grace and understanding. Assume that the people around you don’t mean the worst, even if they do. This is especially true on the internet. Oh, you like German shepherds? Then you also must love Hitler. That sort of discourse would seem insane fifty years ago but happens countless times on Twitter every day. I’m just glad I have people in my life who stick around even though they shouldn’t after the first (or fiftieth) time it seems like I said something personally offensive completely out of the blue. Or maybe they just like hanging out with Lola and are simply forced to put up with me. That’s definitely the real explanation. 

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time. 

James