My Name Should Be Mat

As in "doormat."

I have this friend who can be the biggest sh*t. Sometimes I wonder why I make an effort to maintain a friendship with him. Someday maybe he'll find my blog, read this and realize that he IS a sh*t -- a big, brown, steamy one. Until then, please allow me to vent.

I invited him and a couple of others over for dinner tonight. He seemed excited about it when I asked him yesterday. Unfortunately the other couple had to cancel, so I wanted to confirm that...we'll call him "George"...was still planning on coming. So today when I saw him online, I pinged him to confirm the time -- 6:30.

Here's the text of our convo:

Me: Hey, did you get my voice mail? Will 6:30 work for you for dinner?

George: Do I have a choice?

Super long pause as the steam begins to rise and I try to choke back an angry, scathing response. Deep breath, count... one....two...three....(am I crazy or somehow psycho that his answer angered me??)

Me: Well, I suppose you can choose not to come.

George: Well, 6:30 it is then.

I guess he doesn't realize that I have spent $50 to purchase food, will be cooking for about 2 hours and all he has to do is show up and consume it. Heaven forbid that I should put constraints on his schedule and serve dinner at 6:30. Sheesh!

This is the same friend that asked if I could pick him up at the airport a couple of weeks ago on his return from spending the holidays with his family. I hesitated when he asked. I had already been to the airport once that day, dropping off another couple of friends for a quick trip to Europe. But having a friend drop you or pick you up from the airport is a nice thing. It's good having someone there for you after a long trip, to see a friendly face, and I can totally understand why he asked me. Although, to be honest, I rarely ask friends to chauffeur me to the airport. Atlanta is a huge metro area and many of us in my circle of friends are scattered about the city. I guess I'm the type of person that doesn't like to put people out or inconvenience them. Well, George isn't.

It's about 45 miles round trip from my house to the airport. But when you add in driving from my home, to the airport, to George's house and back to mine, it's around 70 miles total. That's a lot of driving, not to mention gas which is now hovering at $3.00 a gallon. But I still wanted to help and was looking forward to seeing him, so I made the suggestion that since I'd already been to the airport once that day, perhaps he could take the train to the station near my house. I would pick him up from there and drive him home -- still at least 20 miles round trip. His response: "No thanks. That's WAY out of my way."

Somehow I guess it doesn't register with him that for me to drive 70 miles and take an hour and a half out of my work day is somehow NOT out of my way.

Can you see the halo above my head? I swear, it must be there. Either that, or I'm changing my name to Mat.