Thereâs a 30-page short story under here. I wrote it on accident trying to make like one joke
Youâre going out tonight in a group of five or six friends, traveling together in one car.
Youâre Chadian social butterflies with densely packed social calendars. You have perhaps two or even three different social engagements to get to tonight. At least one of your engagements, letâs say the second one, is on a formal enough schedule that itâs possible to be unacceptably late to, itâs not like a casual large house party you could show up now or two hours later and no one would care. Itâs got a start time that you donât want to be more than a couple minutes late for.
Youâre all together with the group, and more than one of the groupâs members are already undisciplined enough that earlier they caused a 40-minute delay to the initial tentative leave time the group had agreed on for to leave the initial meetup and go to the first social engagement.
Right now youâre at the first social engagement. Itâs 10:15, already 15 minutes past when you were supposed to be at the second engagement, and itâs gonna take 15 more minutes to even get there, maybe even longer if parking ends up being a nightmare, you ideally should have left half an hour ago, reasonably should have left not any less than 20 minutes ago.
Your friends are barbarians without even the minimal discipline to make a night like this work. Not everyone in the group is a good friend that you feel comfortable outright scolding and expressing annoyance/anger at them for being like this, a couple of them are only really acquaintances. Youâd come across as a strange jerk if you openly expressed what is obvious: several people in this party are being hassles and potentially ruining the night for everyone. But itâs rude to say that out loud so the most you can express is mild concern (not even annoyance) at how late weâre running.
Finally everyone has gotten out the door and nearly into the car. Two people are actually already in, the other three are fussing with their jackets, theyâre literally a few seconds from being inside the car.
And now the worst thing in the world has happened. You have had something come up suddenly that is going to potentially delay you (and therefore the entire group) for about 30 seconds. Something small like you left your wallet in the back room of the house, itâll take you 30 seconds to run back in, grab it, and then come out to the car. But this is a 30 second delay that is solely and exclusively your fault, and no one else has anything else to entertain them while they wait to leave, theyâll be purely waiting. This is not a delay that can be amorphously blamed on the group as a whole for being too scatter-brained to get their shit together and leave on time. Itâs 10:15:00 and the reason the car isnât going to be moving at 10:15:10 is only because of you, everyone else is ready in the next 5 seconds except you. Never you mind that the reason you werenât all leaving at fucking 9:45 is because one person in your group hadnât yet gotten her full time to hang with all 87 of the different friends she specifically wanted to hang with at this casual house-party you all only planned to briefly make an appearance at for an hour and a half before leaving to get to a thing that starts at 10:00. No, the egregious delays imposed on the group by others were not quite so obviously one single personâs whole-ass fault. Even though it basically was her whole-ass fault, because everyone else had individually in 1-on-1 conversations told you as early as 9:35 they were ready to leave whenever, and only Jackie kept saying she wasnât ready to leave. During the last agonizing 40 minutes, people might have gotten briefly distracted with random 3- or 5-minute little activities (drinking shots, meeting a cat, etc.) that would have prevented them from leaving the house immediately upon request, but Jackie was the only person who had ever needed significantly more time, and was never truly ready like ready-to-leave-in-the-next-sixty-seconds at any point before roughly 10:10.
Itâs 10:15 and you now have to decide whether to literally just leave your wallet behind and endure an extremely inconvenient night ahead at bar trivia (which was advertised as starting at 10:00, and definitely will have gotten started by at the latest 10:20 if it hasnât already). Because if you drop the bomb on this group of completely undomesticated savages that you need to delay them by 30 seconds to go grab something before you get in the carâsome of them are literally and unashamedly going to get annoyed and resentful of you (even though the lionâs share of this delay is not even remotely your fault and actively happened against your best efforts and you have still been patient and keeping your cool this whole time not expressing overt annoyance at anyone). But itâs actually even worse than that, because you could probably handle that. Some stupid unobservant savages who donât pay attention to anything might briefly think very very slightly-poorly of you, thatâs not a big deal. But what is a big deal is that this thirty second delay you have caused is just quite long enough that this group of fucking ADHD-crippled second-graders might very well not be able to stay on task and sit patiently for thirty god damn seconds.
The five of them will sit silently in the car for about ten seconds of awkward silence, and one of these fucking drooling idiots is almost certainly going to misapprehend the situation so drastically that they will interpret this thirty second delay as actually being something thatâs going to be like a five-to-seven minute delay. Perhaps they wonât believe you were telling the truth that you know exactly where your wallet is and youâre just going to grab it, itâs fifty feet away with like two doorways separating you; perhaps they [fucking irrationally and unreasonably] suspect you of being the kind of inconsiderate undisciplined barbarian who would so radically exaggerate that a five-to-seven minute errand is actually only going to take âthirty secondsâ. Maybe they decided they thought you said you lost your wallet and are about to undertake an essentially blind hunt through a strangerâs house to find wherever you left it. They choose to believe this because theyâre stupid, on a fundamental level, and the thing about stupid people is that they erroneously believe almost everyone in the world is much stupider than them. They have a massively unearned superiority complex and believe everyone else is basically a hopeless bumbling idiot, even though theyâre not, most people are perfectly fine, and the stupid person is in fact the not-super-competent one (if you were a less generous person you might even go so far as to say they are the one who is a fucking bumbling idiot, if anyone is).
And so because there is a high likelihood that one of your savage friends/acquaintances is going to mistakenly predict this infinitesimal delay is actually a relatively substantial delay, they might very well do something unforgivable and catastrophic, like get out of the car and start off on any kind of three-to-ten-minute errand of their own like smoking a cigarette or going back inside the house to give a hug to someone theyâd forgotten to even say hi to during the two hours they were at the party. And once the first person boldly does this, the discipline of the entire squad will be shattered, your entire platoon will be routed humiliatingly, scattered and forced to retreat in ad hoc unorganized fashion, a total failure.
So what this means is that at 10:15, even though youâre an angel and have very dutifully (actually gone above and beyond) tried to keep this groupsâs delicate night plans intact, you are now quite possibly in the make-or-break position. If the worst happens, and those five people get out of that car, the night might very well be a complete wash. Theyâll get out and scatter and the chances of leaving this driveway any time before like 10:25 at the earliest will be completely obliterated. At that point, you envision youâll certainly be substantially late enough to bar trivia that the group will decide to just give up on bar trivia entirely, because you missed the deadline by too much now. Keep in mind you might very well already be too late to officially compete, but youâve been optimistic and have even gone further than that, scheming to nourish the groupâs delusional optimism that bar trivia always starts way late and itâll be fine if you guys get there a half hour late, even though thatâs actually a very remote chance. This never bothered you because youâre deep down a cool casual person and youâre fine with showing up late and playing the last 3/4 of bar trivia with your friends even if you missed the first few questions and youâre not officially part of the competition to get the most points out of any of the 150 people in the bar and win the coveted $50 gift card. But your friends are quite dim people, they get enticed by shiny objects and they think they believe the fun of bar trivia mainly comes from the actual competition and trivial prize winnings, not the fun experience of sitting around drinking with your friends and learning a few silly fun facts about Britney Spears and the French-and-Indian War. Your dim friends wrongly think they believe that thereâs almost no point going to bar trivia if you arenât in the running to officially get first place and win the $50 gift card (which split six ways would mean each of you saving a grand total of like $8 or $9), even though this is obviously not true to anyone who has ever been even slightly curious about anything ever in their life. They donât know that they most definitely would actually still have fun playing the last 3/4 of bar trivia or even just the last 1/2 of it and that giving up if this group is slightly too late (or very too late) is nonsensical. You could not possibly explain a concept this advanced to them. Certainly not in just the ten seconds any of these nitwits would ever allow you to explain anything to them that they didnât already immediately instinctively unthinkingly agree with on a gut level.
But then again you donât even know for sure that they canât handle the 30-second delay. Maybe youâre actually kindof being a judgmental self-superior dickhead asshole to think that, which youâve arguably been known to do. It is certainly possible these people could manage to stay on task and stay in the car while you run in to get your wallet. And so itâs possible this night could still go off fairly smoothly without even you having to inconveniently pretend to only realize at 10:50 later after youâve all gotten settled in at bar trivia that you have completely forgotten your wallet back at this house.
Should you take that chance? Should you take a gamble on the inherent goodness and divine ingenuity of mankind, a gamble that has as a reward a smooth evening for you?
You might be thinking of course you should, because obviously itâs actually not the end of the world if this group gives up entirely on bar trivia. If youâll recall, 800 paragraphs ago I mentioned thereâs actually a third social engagement you guys had tentatively planned on tonight. When bar trivia finished at around maybe midnight, you were gonna go to another different house party to finish off the night. This third engagement is actually the only thing you value at all about tonight. The first engagement was a party at an acquaintance-of-an-acquaintanceâs house that your group had bizarrely planned was a good idea to visit for just an hour or so before heading to âthe real eveningâ, the main event of the night, which was supposed to be bar trivia. That party sucked, you were counting down the minutes until you could leave, and were ready as far back as 9:35 to leave it and so you just spent the better part of an hour not only at a sucky party but also doing the least fun part of any party, which is corralling your group out the door to leave. The second engagement of the night is bar trivia, which everyone had planned on and while you would certainly have a good time there, you wouldnât be like crushed if the whole thing was canceled in favor of better plans.
The tentative third engagement of the night is what you actually wanted to go to. Itâs by far your #1 out of these three events, and you would literally have willingly tolerated two shitty events prior to it if in exchange you could get your group to come to the third engagement with you. You already thought tonight was gonna go pretty well all things considered, since it was only supposed to be one shitty event you didnât care about but then one decently-good event youâd like before the really-good event you wanted. The tentative third engagement of the night is a house party at the house of a friend you really like and want to spend more time with, and you know a certain girl is going to be there. A girl who you have it on good authority has definitely sent out diplomatic feelers looking into the possibility of maybe possibly touching your dick a lot. Apparently sent out on some adorably transparent pretext asking friends if you had a girlfriend, trying to gauge whether youâre even slightly open to the possibility of letting her keep the Alsace-Lorraine territory in the impending armistice agreement, or whatever.
So wouldnât it actually be kindof a good thing if bar trivia falls through completely and you all just go to the third engagement a little earlier than anticipated, as a âbackupâ? Youâd get to spend a lot more time at that party. Shouldnât you actually be plotting and scheming this entire night to delay and delay until all plans except the third engagement fall through and so the third-engagement-as-backup-for-failed-second-engagement becomes the obvious option?
No. You canât. Because hereâs the remote foreseen-but-dismissed catastrophe where this unstable isotope of a night could go supercritical (I donât know what those words mean, this metaphor could be incoherent for all I know. Donât even bother, nerds). This is something that was unlikely to ever happen but had been vaguely mentioned here and there over the past day or two as a possible alternative to all three of these engagements. This is like the 1% chance you didnât even bother worrying about. This is the outcome so bad it would assuredly torpedo the entire night. It involves plans so shitty you would choose to be at home rather than do, no exaggeration.
One girl in your groupâobviously itâs Jackie, every reader already knew that, thereâs always just one person who is always the problemâhas been murmuring from time to time about potentially one day going to this fancy dance club. Apparently itâs somewhat hot right now, some big name celebrities have been there in the past year.
These plans are unbelievably shitty. This club is a forty minute drive away in the most optimistic traffic scenario, and parking will be an absolute nightmare. There could very well be a line out the door like in the movies, like where itâs totally at capacity and the bouncers (plural) at the door only let a few people in every few minutes after a few people leave. If you got to this place, thereâs a realistic possibility you might never even get in the door the whole night. Furthermore itâs going to be unbelievably packed and sweaty, and youâre going to be extremely underdressed if you show up tonight.
All the people there are going to be extremely mean and unfriendly, the kind of people who will full on make eye contact with you but wonât even give you the slightest smile, eyebrow raise, or head nod. They will make eye contact with you (and therefore implicitly acknowledge that they did see you and know you exist)âthey will make eye contact with and then give you nothing other than a hateful look or a look of complete contempt. Complete psychopaths.
People who are like sortof rich in that they spend a lot of money and live a fancy lifestyle but none of them are like people with normal rich person jobs like doctor or lawyer or executive that would pay a lot of money. People who could only be (1) the children of the superrich, (2) the barnacles that befriend and latch onto big rich celebrities and live off their largesse, (3) people who like vaguely work in the music industry or Hollywood but not as a performer or a writer/producer, but still get paid low six figures somehow, or (4) straight-up big time criminals living the high life, like people who not only make their living off of crime but make an extremely good living off of crime. Real no-joke gangsters, mafia, or whoeverâand of course their barnacles who live off their largesse. This club will be full of people who are actual snobs. Not just âsnobsâ the way you might say hipsters of some variety are music snobs or beer snobs or whatever, people who think they have better taste than most people. Those people are usually fine and not actual snobs. Actual snobs are people who fully and unashamedly treat total strangers with complete contempt and open hostility. People who have not even the slightest shred of courtesy that indicates any kind of vague basic empathy for fellow human beings. People who truly donât even care what you think of them even for the five seconds youâre interacting with them, because your opinion cannot possibly negatively affect them in any way, because they have more power or status than you. Youâre an ant to them and they act like it.
Anyway this club Jackie kinda wants to go to and might suggest, is basically the 6th or 7th ring of hell and you will not go there. If somehow the plans got changed to go there, you would just find your way home instead. Thatâs how much you do not want to go. You will risk making a scene and looking like a jerk baldly telling the group âyeah sorry Iâm going home early⊠suddenly and with no warning or valid urgent excuse for ditching you guys.â Although a few of the people in this group are such barbarians they might not even care that you left and might not even the feel basic urge to overtly perform (and slightly sincerely feel) regret and sadness that you will be leaving and not enjoying the fun with all of us. That would sting a little, but youâd still take that sting over the nightmare of going to the club Jackie wants to go to.
And if you donât get this car moving before 10:25, and the bar trivia plans fall through. There is a real and significant (though by no means guaranteed) possibility that Jackie will float the dance club as a possible way to scrap and salvage the evening, even though this is the stupidest idea possible even by her own standards because thereâs no way theyâre getting to the place with enough time to spend a reasonably good long time there. And as stated thereâs a real chance they could go all the way there and never even manage to get in the door at all.
If Jackie floats this idea she will almost certainly use girlfriend-voice to get her boyfriend (your good friend) to unreservedly endorse her proposal and make it appear as if two people in the group have a strong and solid proposal for salvaging the evening with superior plans. And in the chaos and confusion and unpreparedness and total-lack-of-any-preferences-or-proposals-at-all that everyone else will be experiencing in the immediate aftermath of a possible vote to cancel the bar trivia plans, you will be in an extremely unfavorable political situation if you try to argue your case for salvaging the night by just going to the third engagement as tentatively planned.
It will be two versus one (though Jackieâs boyfriend doesnât actually want to go to the dance club, but he doesnât really care either way and heâll want to make his girlfriend happy when she clearly wants something). Thatâs already an extremely bad position to be in. Most people suck at understanding fractions and assume that if any plural number of people in the group hold a position (even just two and still a minority), thatâs waaaaay more popular support than a position that only one singular person is holding. The three clueless undecideds will see the shitty dance club proposal as basically being like âthe thing people in this group are talking aboutâ and will see your objectively solid-er and quite arguably superior proposal as being one single manâs opinion, a random lone dissent from overwhelming group consensus. They probably wonât see what you see so clearly, that two people holding a position here is at the absolute most only twice as much support as one person holding a position and either way still a minority, and in practice itâs not really even two people holding a position because Jackieâs boyfriend is the equivalent of a stuffed shirt in Congress. He doesnât actually hold any positions or preferences, he could join any coalition, and would do so easily if he thought it necessary to keep someone happy. Itâs really one-vs-one, your proposal versus Jackieâs proposal.
And you should be in a stronger position because your plan was already tentatively agreed on as the third engagement of the evening, and your engagement is much, much easier for literally everyone and is a rock solid proposal as opposed to a this-thing-might-not-even-happen proposal Jackie would be proposing the entire congress take a huge gamble on. Sheâs the one in the weak position of making up a brand new engagement on her own, on the fly, with no prior discussion with anyone about us possibly doing this.
But politics is all about appearances in situations like this. Even though your proposal is objectively superior in every way, at least by your standardsâand is at least partially objectively superior in some ways by everyoneâs universal standards insofar as your proposal is safe and hers is shaky and could fall apart catastrophicallyâthe undecideds might not see it that way. Theyâre incurious barbarians and impressed by shiny objects. Marketing and media has understandably given them the impression that going out to a fancy dance club that big-name celebrities go to is like objectively a very high-level top-shelf kind of way to spend a Friday Night. The same way that like going to a huge concert of a band everyone likes with a crowd of 50,000 and pyrotechnics and shit is objectively top-shelf superior plans to, like, open mic night at a coffee shop where a guy no one knows is going to badly sing and play acoustic guitar and a few enbies will recite awful spoken word never-even-once-rhyming poetry. Plans that might make some coworkers say âwow!â and be genuinely slightly envious of how cool your social life is.
They donât know that the entire concept of dance clubs is all hype, that literally no one in history has ever once actually enjoyed their time at a (hetero) dance club, though a small handful will have met someone to hook up with there, and will mistake that fortunate outcome for having enjoyed their time at the club. But even thatâs only a minority of attendees. The majority of schmucks in that club are striking out and not hooking up with anyone. In fact a not-insignificant portion of the single women there are actually paid to be there and basically employees and have little intention of sleeping with anyone they meet there. Theyâre paid to be eye candy and to fluff up the apparent gender ratio which is in actuality a desperate angry sausage-fest with about five horny men for every one single boyfriend-less woman. Itâs a sweet job, I do not begrudge these women in the slightest, donât mistake the author for someone resentful of this reality.
The dance club is a shiny object, and prevailing cultural standards of elitism and consumerism have deceived the people into believing that casual house parties with friends with near-zero preparation/decoration/catering are not actually the parties that the most people actually have a good time at, compared to say weddings or nights out at a bar or club. The lack of pressure to have a good time facilitates good times. People canât have a good time at an expensive place thatâs designated mainly as a âhangoutâ for âminglingâ because itâs loud and uncomfortable and youâre surrounded by total strangers and literally the only thing to do is make small talk. Unless there is actual entertainment being provided, it universally sucks. Large events with a lot of anonymous people are never ever fun unless youâre all watching a performance, or youâre on once-in-a-while experience drugs like youâre taking molly or doing psychedelics, or youâre getting to play a game or ride rollercoasters or something.
Even things like Coachella which began as pure music festival but partially evolved into âfashionable high-status place to come, hang out, and be seen as high-status with other high-status peopleâ, itâs a place seen to be worth visiting even if youâve never heard of any of the bands/singers before, because you probably wonât even listen to more than two or three, because the real purpose of the festival is hanging out drinking in various tents, and the nightly afterparties at local clubs and hotels and stuff. And that shit sucks. Coachella sucks. No one is having a good time unless they happen to be on molly. And you can fucking do molly anywhere, you donât need to blow a bunch of money and go out to sweat your ass off at this awful music festival.
But dumb barbarians cannot be argued out of their high opinion of shiny objects. They are impervious to reason. They reject the empirical evidence of even their own experiences, they will believe what advertisements tell them is quality, over and above their own direct personal evaluation.
So itâs 10:15:00 and youâve got several different risky chance events to deal with simultaneously. And they neither clearly stack with each other nor clearly cancel each other out, because they are not independent. The possibility of total bar trivia cancellation is a weird risk for you. There is what I would crudely estimate is about a 30% chance that total bar trivia cancellation could actually be slightly good for you, because thatâs the probability that if it were to be canceled, you could convince the Congress to go with your proposal instead of Jackieâs, and then youâd get to spend like an extra two hours at the party you really wanted to go to, which is a nice bonus, but not really game-changing. But thereâs about a 50% chance that total bar trivia cancellation would result in Jackieâs proposal passing in a landslide, which is a catastrophic worst-case scenario. And then thereâs like a 20% wild card unpredictable chance that total bar trivia cancellation results in some unforeseen third outcome, a whole new plan no oneâs even mentioned yet (very likely to be something shitty) or just the whole group disbanding in disgrace and despair, everyone calling it a night before itâs even 10:45, or even more dispiritingâa partial breakup where half the group disperses to go home alone, but two or three people kind of not-so-subtly split off for some other ultra-redundancy backup plans they can form on the spur of the moment, but exclusive plans that could not work for a group this big, like going to smoke good weedâor perhaps some more obscure drug that isnât an upperâ at a cool dudeâs house but in the kind of small quiet gathering that six people absolutely cannot show up to unannounced. Only a maximum of two or three people could reasonably invite themselves on the fly to this intimate gathering, and youâve never heard of this guy so you absolutely would not be one of those two or three.
So if this chance event happens, thatâs 70% likelihood of extremely bad outcomes, or 30% likelihood of a moderately improved outcome over your current baseline where the chance event doesnât happen. Obviously this is the kind of thing you would prefer not to happen, the math is clear. You absolutely donât want total bar trivia cancellation. Because successfully getting to bar trivia brings you to a near certainty of getting to the good house party, albeit for a shorter time.
Although, now that you think about it, itâs probably not quite near certainty. Itâs a good chance, much better than 50-50. But itâs not out of the realm of possibility that bar trivia could finish around midnight, and scattered murmurings about being tired or drunk enough or having work tomorrow could inspire unexpected defections. No oneâs given any explicit indication so far that theyâre not all that excited about the tentative third engagement, but neither has anyone been excited enough that the Congress ever passed a vote of cloture to finalize the third engagement and make it an official part of the nightâs plans rather than a mere tentative one. Your friends are good partiers, not one of them has ever been known to have a problem staying out until 2:00 AM. But still, itâs not impossible. Things like that have happened before: the group getting tired a little early and calling it a night at a still respectable but relatively early hour like midnight. To do that would not be seen by anyone as a massive weenie wet blanket proposal, the way âletâs call it a night at 10:45â is a weenieâs proposal.
So itâs 10:15 and even if you play it absolutely safe and are forced by your barbarian friends to make the absolutely outrageous and unreasonable sacrifice of choosing to leave your wallet behind at this random house party (which youâll have to come get tomorrow) and endure an extremely inconvenient time at bar trivia whining and negotiating for your friends to loan you money for drinks and trying to convince bartenders youâre definitely well over 21 years old but donât have your ID on youâeven if you play it absolutely safe that way, thereâs still no absolute guarantee youâll get to go to literally the only part of this evening that you were ever seriously excited about. Youâd probably never have wanted to go to this first house party of almost exclusively strangers, although maybe youâd have been less sour and more open to the experience if it wasnât the completely stupid âletâs make a brief appearance at a party weâll have to leave way too early from, and then drive to a defined time-sensitive event which will require that we definitely leave the party even if it turned out to be a great party that no one would otherwise want to leave too quicklyâ plan your group concocted as a half-baked compromise between literally dozens of theoretical proposals. But youâre a good sport and good friend and fair-minded and of course youâll always go out with your friends to even events you definitely wonât like, if at least that event is only a portion of the evening, and youâll get them to go to something you like. Thatâs just basic sharing. âIâll go to the thing you wanna go to, and youâll come to the thing I want to go to.â
And you even got the better part of the bargain because your event was going to be the final one of the evening, where everyone can climax for the night, without having to hold anything back or be prepared to pack up and leave anywhere at any particular hour. Who knows, youâre at an age where itâs still not completely unthinkable that you might sleep a few hours on the couch, leaving an hour or two after sunrise. In the latter half of your 20s youâre too old to actually pass out drunk on someoneâs couch and stay there until the next day unless theyâre your very good friend. Around age 22 is already pushing the limit of how much youâre allowed to get away with being a cute little kid who canât hold his liquor, and not just a rude, presumptuous or downright creepy alcoholic. But if you were to have âaccidentallyâ fallen asleep at like 3:30 on the couch cuddling with a certain someone who was sleeping with her head on your chest and the slightest little smile on her face in a way that is so cute and wholesome the host could not possibly be mad enough to shake you both awake and force you to leaveâthen you could get away with staying on that couch until around 6:30. At that hour, your mouth is approximately at the humidity of the Atacama desert (where not even a fraction of an inch of rainfall has ever been recorded since recordkeeping began) and your eyes sting regardless of whether you slept at all and youâve held in a fart so long it now wouldnât come out immediately, it would need a minute or two of coaxing before you could squeeze it out even if you wanted to. Politeness would require you get up and leave now and your personal comfort would demand it anyway, Jesus Christ. But you and a certain someone parting ways at 7:00 AM after a groggy taxi ride and more or less explicit plans to meet againâthatâs just about the perfect outcome for this night. The only possible way your life could get any better at that point is if the girl is presumptuous or badass enough to assume you two wonât yet be parting ways when you have to get off the couch at 6:30. What if she did something fucking amazing like ask open-endedly âso⊠do you wanna go to my place or should we sleep at yours?â Thatâs too good to expect to happen even as an optimistic outcome for the night. But itâs a nice fantasy to entertain and itâs not like a completely impossible fantasy, itâs surely happened to someone out there before, somewhere, at least a few times in history.
But none of that is certain. Even the safe bet isnât totally safe. So it might be worth taking the chance on risking total bar trivia cancellation. Whatâs the actual likelihood that a thirty second delay leads to total bar trivia cancellation? Could it even be 50-50? Thatâs a pessimistic-ass view of human nature isnât it? Could you be being a completely unreasonable self-superior asshole to even be worried that that could happen?
Well no, things approximately that egregious have definitely happened in your life before. Itâs not completely unreasonable to think something like that could happen again. But is it likely?
Itâs almost 10:15:02, youâve spent almost the entire last two seconds thinking about all of this. [AUTHORS NOTE: Yes every single paragraph of this was explicitly touched on in my internal monologue in the span of less than two seconds, I may use shorthand and references that would be unintelligible to anyone if I had to somehow subvocalize it to a beat, but Iâm not exaggerating when I say every single detail of this rant is something Iâm capable of thinking and feeling over the course of two seconds. Not on command, but itâs happened before.]
Itâs 10:15:02 and youâre approaching the point where you would start to feel self-conscious about being in public and pausing, being totally still, and being totally zoned-out and lost in thought. Someone could see you and think youâre a weirdo or dumb-dumb who actually doesnât move effortlessly through every fraction of a second of every day of your life. Youâre not supposed to let people know that youâre such a failure, itâs embarrassing. Probably most people do it once in a while, but still. Itâs not good (although now that you think about it, for all you know actually hardly anyone does it, youâve barely ever seen anyone do it. Maybe youâre being wildly overgenerous to yourself and actually only a few losers ever have to do that thing where you have to stop walking and pause for a few seconds to think about what to do next).
Right now itâs 10:15:02. If by 10:15:05 you were still standing in the same place, silent and motionless, someone would definitely notice what a spaz loser you are. For all you know they might notice and start thinking that much earlier than 10:15:05. So you pretty much need to act now
Itâs time to make a decision. Itâs not quite the permanent decision yet actually. Youâre two steps out the front door, everyone else is in the car about fifteen feet away. If you were to make the decision to go back for the wallet, youâd have to announce it to everyone, and to do so youâd need to take a few steps closer to the car and make sure you had at least one personâs attention, so you could explain in 1.5 seconds âI gotta go grab my wallet.â But if you were to make the decision to cut your losses and leave the wallet you would also need to start taking a few steps toward the carâŠand then obviously a couple more steps after that and then get in the car and leave. So thereâs still a little time to decide, kinda.
You figure if your brief announcement (it canât be any longer than maybe ten words at the absolute longest) uses the word âgrabâ the wallet, rather than âgetâ or God forbid âfindâ the wallet, it will hopefully sound authoritative enough that the Congress will believe with sufficient confidence that you know where the wallet is and this could not possibly take more than like sixty seconds at the absolute worst case scenario, and probably less. It will hopefully not sound flimsy enough that they immediately experience suspicions that this car wonât be moving any time in the next five minutes.
You already decided eons ago, sometime like before even 10:15:01, that however you phrased your announcement, you would not actually explicit say it would take thirty seconds, because thatâs such a small amount but itâs not literally a common phrase like âtwo secondsâ, and someone who is stupid is inclined to assume that everyone else is stupid. And they believe everyone else is the kind of stupid where you wildly underestimate how long your little errands will take because youâre being oh so generous to yourself and mindlessly inconsiderate to others, not-even-self-aware that youâre exaggerating, shining them on with a wild exaggeration that you can actually do in âfive minutesâ something that in-all-likelihood will take 15 or 20.
But youâre not stupid, youâre not a thoughtless oaf who would ever unintentionally tell a lie like that. Youâre actually kindof smart. (Okay wait, take it easy, pal. Calling yourself smart, even not out loud but just in your internal monologue, is probably something a stupid person with an unearned superiority complex would do, now isnât it?)
Regardless of circular definitions of stupidity, you long ago decided you would not give a time frame because you donât trust these barbarians not to get unreasonable suspicions that you would be exaggerating just how brief of a delay it is. Youâre just going to announce the reason for the delay, go do it, and come back. God willing, all five of them would all still be in the car when you walk back out thirty seconds laterâif indeed thatâs the course of action you go with. If theyâre out milling around smoking cigarettes or some have come back in the house, youâll just have to fight that battle when you come to it. If indeed you choose to go through with the delay.
But itâs at this precise momentâit might even be well past 10:15:03 by now for all you know, youâve lost trackâthis thinking about what exactly to say to announce the delay has given you an idea.
What if you went with an extremely alpha (okay relatively alpha) wild card maneuver? What if you uttered exactly zero words about what you were about to do, gave no warning at all. What if you immediately and abruptly turned on your heel and started movingâvery fast, with purposeâin the opposite direction.
Without a word youâd be radically abandoning what these people quite reasonably thought was your immediate plan for the next ten seconds, the next ten minutes, the next ten hours. Fuck, theyâd have not even the slightest clue what the fuck youâre doing. Youâd look completely insane. Totally batshit. No one acts like such an absolutely unhinged weirdo spaz like that, except in extremely rare circumstances where they have a very good excuse.
And thatâs the beauty of this wild card maneuver, isnât it? Youâre gonna blow these peopleâs minds, their jaws will be dropping. For at least a solid ten seconds theyâre going to be non-rhetorically asking questions like âwait, what just happened?â They genuinely wonât have an immediate answer in their head to that question. Theyâre actually asking for an answer. For Godâs sake, theyâll be desperately demanding that someone, anyone, help make the world make sense again.
After the ten seconds of panicked confusion, there will be a minimum of twenty seconds of discussion about what they think you might be doing in there. You just up and disappeared back into the house for no apparent reason. âWhat the fuck?â And itâs twenty seconds at a minimum, there could well be thirty, forty, sixty, fuck, dude, there could actually be over a minute of discussion before they reach a satisfactory conclusion orâmore likelyâlose interest entirely in the conversation and start doing something else.
Itâs golden. Itâs a more or less guaranteed thirty seconds before it occurs to anyone to get off task, get out of the car, and start doing something else. They all five will definitely still be in the car when you re-emerge at no later than 10:15:33. And if you re-emerge by that time or earlier, you will be greeted by a car full of wide eyes that stare and immediately ask âwhat the fuck was that?â
You hope theyll say it with politeness and affectionately, like theyâre being good friends and asking you âwhat the fuck was that you big goofball? You just acted so silly just now, we couldnât even comprehend it. Explain yourself.â
But they very well might not say it like that. They might say it in like a tone that sounds almost like genuinely concerned, like theyâre seriously asking (politely and not overtly of course): âis there something seriously wrong with you? Are you an actual real life Big Spaz Weirdo we probably canât be like real normal friends with?â
You summon the minimal backbone necessary to banish that deeply pathetic fear that this brief act of unexplained internal chaos or whimsy is going to completely change your relationship with these people. Thatâs almost certainly not going to happen. Spending even milliseconds worrying about that is something a 12-year-old boy does, because they hysterically believe the esteem of their peers is literally a matter of life and death, and havenât learned yet that maturity means taking tiny risks all the time and having at least the minimal self-confidence to not dissemble when having to do so.
But even though this plan is foolproof and youâre going with it now; you will have to concoct some kind of story about how to present âoh I forgot my wallet and so had to go back to get itâ in a way that can either (1) successfully convince them that you are still a Normal who never has weird moments of internal chaos typified by not-perfectly-rationally-explainable actions like walking in one direction and then immediately turning to walk in the exact opposite direction, and itâs actually perfectly unremarkable to do that and they are the weird one actually; or more likely (2) explain that you are kind of a spacey weirdo who does zone out sometimes and sometimes goofily does illogical incongruous things like make five steps of progress toward a goal and then immediately intentionally undo all of that progress. If youâre able to pull off being cute enough; or youâre able to ever-so-gently pressure them with subtle wokeness to automatically unquestioningly accept your apparent minor neurodivergency without even a hint of judgment, then you might be able to get them to accept your explanation, laugh with you not at you about it, and then forget this entire thing happened within five minutes, because this is such a trivial unimportant episode of life no normal humanâs brain could possibly spare the memory space for it.
For them to remember this event would be like remembering the tenth-funniest joke your friend told after a long night of jokes a year or two ago, something you guys share at least every couple months or so. Thatâs insane, no one remembers that level of detail. Maybe you remember the #1 funniest thing he said that night, and even thatâs not assured. You might very well forget every single specific thing he said and simply remember that overall he was funny and you had a nice time that night.
But thatâs the ideal outcome. Another very possible outcome is that you explain (2) but they donât show you magnanimous grace and interpret your goofiness super charitably. They choose not to find you cute enough, or they choose to successfully resist your opportunistic though perfectly justifiable exploitation of social justice sympathies. (Itâs a coin flip whether they resist your exploitation in an approving of antiwokeness way or a disapproving of antiwokeness way, like âneurodivergence is a valid excuse for some people but I do not grant its validity in your case, and also Iâm frankly not amused that you would even think to use wokeness in your own defense as a white male, that shows insufficient reverence to these sacred concepts.â Itâs potentially very dangerous if they disapprove of antiwokeness, but that wonât be immediate and may not be irremediable.) If they resist your charms and your appeal to wokeness, then they may just give off a laugh that is decidedly at you not with you, like: âhaha okay, weirdo, whatever you say {âŠnot}â.
But thatâs an acceptable risk, because even that bad outcome is pretty survivable. Not the end of the world. I donât want to vilify Jackie too heavily so I donât want to give off the impression that weâre assuming Jackie would be the one who says that (in so many words). For all I know she could be too nice to say that, or even too nice to think it. Jackieâs not necessarily like a bitch, we donât know her very well. Sheâs your minor partial enemy in this very particular situation but she is not an antagonist of your life and she like anyone should enjoy presumption of innocence, and we should assumeâunless we elsewhere learn otherwiseâthat she is completely innocent of any wrongdoing or bad qualities. Sheâs not on trial here.
So you do it. Itâs 10:15:04 and youâre turning on a dime to walk back inside. You get your wallet, you get back outside by like 10:15:20 or so because youâre a worrywart who always overestimates (never underestimates) how long errands will take.
You give off some passably- but inexpertly-executed excuse for what the fuck you just did. By the time youâre reading this you donât even remember what exactly you said or they said or how exactly it went over. It would only occur to you minutes later that a perfect lie to explain your behavior would have been to say: âI heard a voice inside the house call my name, I had to go back and talk to this dude I donât know for 15 seconds about if I accidentally took his phone or something.â It doesnât matter, because it canât affect your choices now, whatâs done is done. For a similar reason you donât put too much thought into which outcome will emerge after bar trivia, itâs completely outside your control so you donât have any choices to make about it, nothing to agonize over. Maybe you agonize a little just in anticipation and hoping against hope that fate decides to give you the good outcome not the bad outcome. But not much.
In the end the outcome is mixed. You guys do end up going to the party after bar trivia but a certain someone is unexpectedly absent. She had like some other thing come up or something, or maybe it was more #valid than just ditching for better plans, no one knows much detail and it would be weird of you to ask around and investigate or comment in anything but the most casual, detached, uninterested, and brief way. You barely even know her, hardly any of her friends even know your name.
You make contact with her once again in your life, a week and a half later. But nothing comes of it, you never really see or hear from her again. Her life just went off in a different direction. To know or to try to know even slightly more detail than that would be creepy. You barely ever knew of her, hardly a single one of her friends would even recognize your face in five years.
But the party was alright. Objectively the absence of a certain someone did not utterly ruin the evening and frankly this whole detailed fantasy of yours with the couch sleeping and the little smile is bordering on pathological erotomania, so you really canât mope about her absence. Not as a reasonable person.
You got to see your friend that you had wanted to spend more time with, the party was nice, you were comfortable.
Your group went home at the end of the night, whatever time that was, without major incident. Youâre pretty sure two people of your group left slightly earlier than you or found some other way home because you feel like you donât remember the car being crowded with five other people on the drive home. Thatâs an impossibly unimportant detail I donât even know why I mentioned it.
