You mean Friday comes every week?

Good morning, Internet. The good mood continues. I woke up at 5:30 AM today and just bounded out of bed. It is SO WEIRD. I keep waiting for my usual snarky self to return, but instead I’m just nice. I think that’s so boring! Anyway, I know yesterday I said I was going to write about important things like this and this and this, but clearly something more pressing (read: not even close) has happened that I need to discuss with you.

My friend Cailin, who I’ve featured here before, and I were talking last night. Cailin is that girl who has that “thing.” Most girls have a friend like her, and damn, if I could bottle it and sell it I would be a very rich woman. Guys flock to her. That’s not an exaggeration. On the street, on the subway, at work, at clubs, at bars, at grad school, in the laundry room of her building…it’s just part of her charm. She thinks it’s hilarious and has a good amount of fun with it. I enjoy it because she always has THE BEST stories. Anyway, last night as we gchatted away, she told me about her latest predicament: boys who call too late/at bad times/without enough notice. It went like this:

Cailin: I’m so over it. It’s like, “Hi Curly, do not contact me Friday afternoon for Friday night. I have plans!”
Me: I hate that!
Cailin: Hi Larry, do not call me at 4 AM. I am asleep. OK, great.
Me: LOL
Cailin: Oh what’s that, you’d like to take me to dinner on Wed? Yeah, I’m busy, but you know Tuesday does. See you at 7:30 PM and thanks for thinking ahead! And you know what else? Hello, Moe, do not summon me to Inwood!
Me: Inwood?
Cailin: F*cking bottleneck of Manhattan
Me: Yeah, I’m sorry. My boundary is 160th.
Cailin: Haha. It’s above Washington Heights! No, sir!

We continued on and talked about how guys who call at 12:30 PM and then leave a message giving her crap about not answering are clearly lacking in the critical thinking category (for all you TFAers out there, it’s totally a CT flag). And Inwood? This is going to sound really snotty, but, in Manhattan, if you are geographically undesirable, you need to step up your game. Maybe you love Inwood, but the girl you’re seeing lives at 135th and you live at 201st. Get your butt on the ABC or 123 and go see her in civilization. She can start going to Inwood when you guys are more than people who see each other a few times a month. And yes, I realize this is unfair, but I remain old-fashioned about maybe five things in life. This is one of them. I am a contradiction in terms. Deal.

But really, my issue is with the Friday day call for Friday night plans:

Friday night is not a surprise phenomenon. Neither is Saturday night. They come once a week. They’ve come once a week for as long as you’ve been alive. You should plan for them accordingly. I do. So no, when you call me on Thursday night or Friday morning, I can’t go somewhere with you. I have plans. Because I have a life. Of my own.

Sometimes it is the lack of planning, but more insidious than that: the need for a last minute replacement because someone cancelled on you. Look dude, we’re not exclusive, we expect you’re dating around, it’s 2009, no shocker here. But you know what you should not do? Call a girl on Friday morning and say something like, “I have tickets to _______” or “I have reservations for _______” because now we know that we’re going on a date you intended for someone else. Honestly, I’m mean. And if it’s good tickets or good dinner, I’ll go and definitely not go home with you after, because that’s what happens to boys who don’t think before acting.

Never throw an instance where we turned you down back into our faces. This was your fault. We had another date, plans with friends, or something else because YOU were late in asking. And please don’t feed me a line right now about how you guys have to play it cool because girls don’t like it if you show interest and if you call too early in the week, it’s not “cool.” This is not MIDDLE SCHOOL. This is real life. I don’t know if you noticed or not, so I needed to make that really clear. If you like a girl, like a girl. It’s ok. She might like you too! (But I can’t imagine why if you can’t plan anything more than a day or two in advance.) Take a chance, call her on Tuesday.

So now the ornery among you are saying, “It shouldn’t matter when he calls, if you like him you should just go.” Oh, ornery people…it does matter. You know why? Because should this be a rare instance where dating morphs into a relationship, now one person is accustomed to the other person dropping their life whenever he needs something. Girls complain about boys’ bad habits a lot, but frankly, we encourage them when we don’t stand by the things we want/expect. You know what I hate? When my friends start dating someone and they disappear from the face of the earth. There’s a natural drop in the amount of time you’ll see them, but don’t make plans with me and then cancel because Todd needs you. Unless Todd is ill, on the verge of suicide, or crying, he does not need you. It’s obnoxious. It’s rude. And it’s the kind of codependency that dooms a relationship from the start, in my humble opinion.

So go forth, ye of the Y chromosome, and call a sister up before midnight on Thursday. I promise you, some of us are actually worth it.