A:Hey, girl! So great to see you at Mike’s party on New Year’s. You free this week? Want to grab drinks?
B: Yo!!!!! Sorry it took me so long to respond. I’m the worst. Yes! I’d love to! First round is on me because I’m so terrible. Tuesday???
A: Ugh, Tuesday is my friend Rachel’s birthday. I am the actual worst. What about Weds?
B: Weds works! Let’s e-mail next week about where to go. Yayyyyyyyyyy.
B: I am total garbage at scheduling and forgot we were supposed to meet up tonight. Could you do Mon? SO SORRY. I feel terrible.
A: OMG, do not feel terrible. You are not as bad as I am. If you’re garbage, then I am, like, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, because Monday doesn’t work. What about tomorrow?
B: I am worse than the global food crisis. Tomorrow’s no good. This is embarrassing, but I signed up for a yoga workshop. (I know, eye roll.) Anyway, hopefully I’ll get my shit together and stop being the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by next week. Xo.
B: Heya—we both totally dropped the ball on this! Our bad! We are, like, the subprime-lending crisis of hanging out, right? You around on Weds? I want to go back to that tapas place we went to on the Fourth of July.
A: Shoot, Wednesday doesn’t work. My mom and stepdad are in town, so I have to take them to dinner, which is going to be worse than the rollout of healthcare.gov, but whatever, I have to do it. Hmm . . . dare I say Friday?
B: Shit. Friday is no good. I am literally Operation Rolling Thunder mixed with the N.F.L.’s policy on domestic violence. But whatcha gonna do? Monday?
A: Stop it. You’re fine. I, on the other hand, am seriously Vermont’s heroin epidemic multiplied by Bill Cosby. I can’t do Monday because I have to help my roommate pick up a kitchen island she bought on Craigslist. (Loooong story.)
A: I can’t believe we never scheduled this! I miss u! I’m gonna stop being brokers’ fees atop a cake made out of unlicensed plastic surgery and say . . . Tuesday?
B: Jesus. I am, like, the Spanish Civil War riding in a subway car with broken A.C., seated between Kim Jong-un and the phrase “said no one ever.” But I could do coffee like midday on Tues?
A: I’m sorta, kinda trying to get off caffeine (I know, I know—I’m worse than the Hobby Lobby verdict dancing with Vladimir Putin on Elaine Stritch’s grave while the Vietnam War plays “All About That Bass” on the didgeridoo), but lunch would be great.
B: OMG, do not worry about it. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I’m a smoothie blended in an Amazon fulfillment center, containing “Songs of Innocence,” Reaganomics, and old hot-dog water. I seriously cannot believe I forgot you quit coffee. Lunch it is.
B: So excited about our lunch date! 12:30?
A: This is basically just a joke at this point, but I have this dumb meeting about records retention or something that got pushed back to one. You don’t have to tell me that I’m mercury poisoning hooking up with the Crusades in the bathroom at trans fat’s wedding to voter suppression, because I know. Ugh . . . sorry.
B: Don’t worry about it, dude. How’s tonight?
B: Oh, wait, shit, sorry to be Aaron Sorkin eating toothpaste straight from the tube. I forgot that my writing group meets tonight. Then tomorrow I have a thing—too hard to explain—and on Friday I have dinner with some work people. You’re going to think that I’m the Salem witch trials giving Osama bin Laden a massage at a spa run by the California drought, but I’m also pretty busy next week. How about the ninth, tho?
A: The ninth works great! Yay. ♦
Kelly Stout has been writing humor pieces for the magazine since 2014.
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