I’ve never been stood up on a date before. Thankfully, I say with trepidation, because there’s always a first.
I have, however, been stood up by my nearest and dearest — friends.
And that should hurt more, but because they’re your ride or dies, you’d best keep riding, right?
Besides, it doesn’t really count if you haven’t left the house yet.
ALSO READ |Opinion | Cadre deployment 2.0
Although, I’d say it’s close enough when you get the call ten minutes before you’re about to walk out the door — all dressed up, in the outfit you’ve been planning in your head all week, with your make up “on fleek” as us millennials used to say before the GenZs arrived on the scene with their absurd acronyms and shortened words that age us and our slang ten years overnight.
My bestie is most often my backup plan, always ready to bail me out when I’ve been bailed on.
“Are you free tonight?” I text her. “[So and so] cancelled (again).” And it’d be a shame to waste a perfectly good coat of mascara …
So, we go out and have a good time. Thank God for your high school best friend, who still lives ten minutes away and has the perfectly-matched sad social life as you.
It gives us something to laugh and cry about, in equal measures. We have good dates and bad dates, and no dates, and flaky friends.
And through it all, we have each other. Sometimes my mother is my back up plan. She knows all my flaky friends and she doesn’t mince words.
“I had a feeling,” she says as she gets in the car.
Which sends me into overdrive to defend said flaky friend. Though, perhaps, rather than them, I’m actually defending the sad self-portrait it paints of me.
ALSO READ |Opinion | Kingmaker demands
Birds of a feather; the company you keep, you know how the sayings go. If my friends are flaky, what does that say about me?
Maybe, it’s a case of opposites attract? Of course I’d like to think that. But what if it’s easy to excuse them because, on some level, I am a flaker too?
I have many different friends who all flake for different reasons.
Firstly, there’s the social butterflies that, while my introverted self is charging my social batteries, they’re expending all their extroverted energy and while they’re probably my only event on my social calendar for that week, I’m their third that day.
Something is bound to come up or run overtime. Or simply, their social energy runs out just as mine is fully loaded.
You forgive them, because well that butterfly effect is what you love about them. Then there’s the chaotic friends.
They always have some drama going on. These friends are also the most selfless and caring and very family-oriented, so oftentimes the chaos is external.
It’s someone else they’re helping, which makes it easier to defend their noble cause. Then there’s the scatty friends.
These are the ones you gently message like a day before to remind them, just in case they’ve forgotten, because chances are they have.
Last but not least are my fellow introverts, who have no qualms telling you they just woke up not feeling social today.
ALSO READ |Opinion | No one else can do it
You’ve got to applaud their honesty, although sometimes, I can’t help but wish our 55:45 extrovert-introvert ratio could stay in sync…
There’s another overarching reason for flaky friendships if you’re a Millennial. Our cancel culture is different to today’s GenZ.
While these days, you could probably be “cancelled” online for being flaky, back in the good old 2000s, we were raised on cancelling plans.
Ever expressed relief when a friend calls to cancel because you’re were secretly wanting to cancel too? Welcome to the Millennial club.
Some would go as far as to say we make plans just to experience the relief of cancelling them.
Commitment-phobes perhaps, millennials have earned a reputation for cancelling plans.
The claims are solidified by viral tweets and memes expounding on this generational curse. The jokes are funny because they’re true.
What about the viral tweet pitching a start-up idea called “You’re cancelled”: “When you’ve made plans that you wish you could cancel, you go into the app and press a little button.
If the other person presses theirs too, congratulations! Confetti explodes and your plans are cancelled.” I still don’t know why it hasn’t taken off yet.
Millennials would live on that app like GenZ live on TikTok. This is the millennial microcosm I belong to. Call it the cancel-cult.
We understand our condition. We sympathise. We excuse.
Even if it does mean feeling slightly dejected when on the receiving end of being stood up.
But we get over it. And vow to return the favour at a future date.
ALSO READ |Opinion | It’s about people’s rights
While I sit across the table from my best friend and selfishly lick my wounds at being the latest victim of my cancel culture, I’m aware that I’m the last one to cast the first stone.
You are a part of what you seek to critique. The words of my literary theory honours professor haunt my thoughts. I try to keep my millennial mindset in check.
I try not to do the cancelling, but will admit to sometimes being the secretly relieved recipient that feigns disappointment when the bolder party is brave enough to put their foot down.
So perhaps that makes me a coward? Or maybe I’m just a chronic people-pleaser that hates to let others down. Where do I fit into the flaker equation?
I’m the workaholic flaker: “Something’s come up at work, I’m running a bit late.” “I had the craziest day. I’m so exhausted. Can we reschedule?”
Also, if text message flaking is a thing, I’m guilty as charged. Don’t read too much into my blue ticks, make the best excuses for me and see if you guessed right when I finally do reply.
I will, I promise. Another glaring example is the camping trip my best friend has been trying for over a year to get me to commit to. She even went out and bought a tent.
I’ve made time for every other holiday, but I can’t seem to find a time to commit to that trip.
She’s got a Google calendar to try to keep me in check for all the elaborate plans we agree to make that fall by the wayside.
When the date pops up on my calendar it’s a throbbing reminder that failing to commit and see the plan through is as good as cancelling last minute.
It all just amounts to hot air, as good intentions usually do.
Sometimes we get it right and that’s worth celebrating more than the event. Recently, we’ve gotten honest with each other.
ALSO READ |Opinion | You can’t save the world
We’ll tentatively make plans and check in a few hours before to see if we’re both still on the same page.
It’s the closest to that start-up app that I’ve found and the closest cure to the condition of which flaking is merely a symptom of this frenetic-paced, anxiety-inducing life we lead.
The condition dates back as far as high school when my mother could not comprehend my generation’s nonchalant attitude to making plans.
“So where are you guys going?” “Not sure yet.
We’re still deciding,” was my standard response, a few hours before the set meet-up time. Still is actually. “I don’t know how your generation makes plans,” she’d say, exasperated. Still does.
I don’t know how we do it either, or rather stick to them.
But somehow, two or three cancelled dates later we eventually get out: “This was great, we should do this more often”. “Yes, we definitely should.” We both nod.
