On the train from Boston to Westborough today, I was thinking about how I’ve never really done something to alienate a friend, or at least acquaintence. I was thinking about how I feel like it’s the kind of thing I would like to do just to know what it felt like, but I can think of nobody I know who I would be willing to throw away knowing them but at the same time they are somebody who cares enough about me that it would be meaningful.
That wasn’t very clear. That is, when I am in California, where nearly everybody I am possibly friends with is a plane-trip away (there are some few exceptions, but we’ll just pretend like they don’t count for this imagined scenario), who could I make plans to visit, and then completely ignore said plans and just not actually go? Presumably this wouldn’t work with people I wasn’t at least pretty good friends with, for a variety of reasons. They might simply not care beyond the potential inconvenience. Actually I wonder if among my friends I tried this, who would actually be significantly upset by it. Anyway, in my own pondering, it seemed to me that anybody who might possibly actually care should I do this, is not somebody I’d be willing to try it on, for I wouldn’t want to be somebody they wouldn’t want to associate with.
The more I think about this, the sillier it seems to me. I’m going to sleep instead.
2 responses so far ↓
1 ani // Oct 11, 2006 at 11:31 am
This seems like it would have little power to upset – rarely are people terribly inconvenienced by not having a planned guest visit. Much better would be to have you invite someone, and then flake out by, say, not picking them up at the airport or answering your cell.
2 Russell // Oct 11, 2006 at 11:36 am
You’re certainly right. There are all sorts of reasons this seems like a dumb thing to have posted in the first place, among which is the one you pointed out.
But even so, in the case of inviting somebody then hanging them out to dry, to so speak, there isn’t somebody I think I’d actually do that to, who’d be willing to come to visit in the first place.
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