-I went to a wedding celebration over the last few days and it started disastrously. First of all I got a call from some girl who needed a ride. She was friend's with the bride. I was driving up and I agreed to pick her up on the way. She asked me when I would be leaving and I said 2:30. She then got very excited, way too excited if you ask me. I hate it when people get overly excited about nothing things. She was like "2:30! YAYYY! THAT'S PERFECT!!" That's how happy you get about a fucking departure time? What would happen to you if something actually good happened to you? If you won the lottery would your head explode?

So the next day I get a call from this girl at around 1. She's like "So, I was just wondering where you were in terms of leaving." I was confused because the day before I had said specifically 2:30 and then she celebrated about it so I thought it was clear. I said, "Well I'm almost ready so I'll leave here at 2:15." She said, "So it'll take you about a half hour to get here right?" "Yeah that's right. So I'll be there at 2:45. I'll call you when I pull up." Then she says, "Can you call me when you're leaving and when you get here?" Call you when I'm leaving?! What the fuck is this? I'm not a fucking limo service. I was not happy about her telling me to keep calling her. I felt like saying, 'Yeah sure and I'll also call you every 2 minutes during my trip so that you know exactly where I am every step of the way." What I actually said was, "Look, I'm leaving at 2:15 so I'll be there at 2:45. I'll call you when I get there." "So you're certain you're leaving at 2:15?" "Yeah." "Okay." And that was that.


I pull up to this chick's building right at 2:45 on the dot. I call her and she's like, "Hello?" "Hey it's Tom, I'm downstairs." She says, "Oh God, I'm nowhere near being ready." This seemed very odd to me since we had been talking for almost 2 days about me picking her up at this time. It was also a 2 night trip so I didn't understand what she needed to do to get ready. She said she was baking and I wasn't really sure why she hadn't baked the night before or this morning. She went on, "I'll be down in 10 minutes." "Um...okay." I said sort of not sure what the hell was going on. "I'll be right down." She said. Now one thing I hate is to be kept waiting. I simply refuse to do it. If someone I'm supposed to meet is more than 15 minutes late without calling I'll leave. I feel like it is so rude to waste my time and I just won't do it. But this was unusual because I didn't even know this chick.

I decided that instead of just sitting there in the car like a jackass that I would get coffee and look for a bank to get some cash for the trip. This chick lived in Washington Heights which is on the northern tip of Manhattan. It's a shit area and as I was driving many of the neighborhood thug types kept just walking in front of my car defiantly and not moving. There's this thing that people in NYC do that's truly remarkable. What they do is they walk in the middle of the street when cars are coming and the light is green and they deliberately block you from driving. It's kind of like this inner city game of chicken. They act like they're punking you and stare you down menacingly. Like they've backed you down and have beaten you somehow. Which I don't really understand I mean it's like, yeah, I'm not going to run you over and kill you. Does that prove that I'm a wimp? It's not because I'm a loser it's because I'm not a murderer. Anyhow, as I drove this happened like thirty times, which just added to the already building tension in my system.

I drove around and just figured this girl would call me when she was downstairs. 10 minutes came and went and no call. 15 minutes, no call. 20 minutes, no call. At this point I really started to get pissed off because it started to hit me that this chick that I didn't even know, who I was doing a favor, was keeping me waiting in my car for 20 minutes without even calling me to apologize or explain herself. This was the same chick who was demanding constant updates of my trip up to her place. 25 minutes passed and no call. I literally was about to just leave without her. Then after about 28 minutes my phone rang and it was her. I was like 'fuck her, I'm not answering.'

She then called again about 2 minutes later and now it was my turn to make her wait. I checked the message that she left and it went like this; "Hey Tom, um..I'm out here but I don't think I see you, um, can you call me. If you left I wish you would tell me so I can take a bus." I was amazed at her tone in the message. There was no, 'hey I'm sorry I took 30 minutes to come downstairs.' Nothing like that, in fact she sounded annoyed with me like the audacity of me to not be right there waiting for her when she finally emerged. This was just getting worse and worse.

I finally called her and I said, "Hey. So you're finally ready?" She then said, "Yeah. Where are you?" "I left," I said. I hadn't actually left but I wanted her to think that she had no ride now. "You left?" she asked incredulously. "Why would you just leave?" she asked in a way that indicated that she was unaware that she had just made me wait for her in a car for 30 minutes without calling me or apologizing. "Well you never came down," I said. "Yes I did." "You made me wait for you for 30 minutes." Then she says, "I was down here in 25 minutes." She said in this very condescending tone as if she was unleashing this amazing defense on me. Like she was throwing this in my face to prove how unreasonable I was. That's like if someone shot you and you were like "You asshole! You shot me in the face!" and they were like "Dude, I did not shoot you in the face, I shot you in the neck." As if this were any less offensive and wrong. She seemed to think that making someone you don't know, who's doing you a favor, wait 25 minutes is absolutely nothing like making them wait 30 minutes. And first of all she was wrong. I had the time she called on my phone and it was 28 minutes after we had agreed to meet.

I finally said, "Well 25 minutes is a long time to be late too." She then took on this very angry defensive tone, when what she should have been doing was begging my forgiveness. "Why didn't you call me?" she asked as if she had had it with me. Call her? Like it was my responsibility to be calling her in this situation. I said, "I did call you when I got there to pick you up at the time we agreed to meet. I'm not going to keep calling you." Then she says, "I'll just take the bus," and hung up on me. That sounded fine to me and I drove towards the bridge not really sure how this person gets through life acting this way.

As I drove I got a call from the bride from the wedding celebration I was heading towards. I answered and she was like, "Hey what hapened? My friend called me and said you left her. She said she was 15 minutes late and you just left." I already could see that she was mutilating the story in her favor. I'm sure that when she told others the story later I had been the one who was late and just left her. I explained what had happened to my friend, that I had not left but was driving to get coffee and that her friend, after being 30 minutes late, had hung up on me and said she'd take a bus. My friend told me that there were no buses leaving till the next day and that the girl was now stranded. So basically this chick who's big alternate bus plan she had so brazenly used to one up me had blown up in her face and now I was her only hope. My friend asked me to please give her a ride and I agreed.

I called the girl and I think she answered and then hung up on me. I called again and she answered and I said, "Look I'll give you a ride. I hadn't left. When I said I left I meant to go get something to drink. I would have told you that if you had not hung up on me. I can give you a ride still." Then she sounded apologetic but she kind of seemed confused also. She said somthing to the effect of, "I'm really sorry if I did something to offend you. Whatever I did I'm sorry." It was as if she had no idea why I was mad, even though I had told her exactly why. She was taking this weird stance that was like I was crazy and she had done somthing inadvertently that she didn't understand. I could tell she was sort of panicking because she knew she was stuck without a ride or a bus ride.

I went to pick her up and it took me at least 20 minutes to get there, the tables had turned suddenly. We were sort of overly polite to each other for most of the trip. As we talked it became apparent that she was really annoying. At one point we started talking about the new Batman movie and she said she wanted to see it snce it was the role that killed Heath Ledger. Basically she was saying what the media had been saying, that playing the role of the Joker was so traumatic and daunting that it drove Heath Ledger over the edge and he killed himself. I had heard this theory from Access Hollywood, which I do not believe to be a very worthy news source. This theory is so fucking stupid and retarded and its so clearly the media trying to fabricate some sort of story. I told this girl that if he died because he played the Joker than why didn't all those actors die who had played crazy characters? Why didn't Jim Carrey kill himself after playing the Riddler? Why didn't Anthony Hopkins kill himself after playing Hannibal Lecter? All those characters were maniacs. She of course got very defensive and explained to me, patronizingly, that method actors sometimes get so immersed in their roles that they get stuck in them. She told me that that had happened to her personally. What a surprise. I wanted to ask if she had recently played a character who was a pretentious moron, because she seemed stuck in that role.

I sort of tried to not get pulled into an argument but I said that if Heath Ledger died because he played the Joker then that's pretty sad and I would like to think that he was a stronger individual than that. It must suck to die like that because then you can't defend yourself when morons are speculating on your death. Like if I died idiots could be like, "Yeah he died because he masturbated too much." And I couldn't be like, "Wait no, that has nothing to do with it."

When we got there we separated and I barely saw her the rest of the time. The rest of the weekend was sort of a nightmare but at least I got a good story out of the deal.