"Contractual Obligations"

Over the weekend I was with the friend who can not be named and several funny things happened as is often the case when we are together. The one I am going to talk about concerns a "agreement" we "reached" vis a vis a little transaction.

Both of us are not the most flush of people financially (which is true of most of my friends - the few that I have - it seems misery loves company :) ). Anyway, my friend was broke at this point in the month and, for the most part, so was I. She is a smoker, which I am not, and had gone about three days, if not a little more, without cigarettes.

So, she asked me to lend them $10 so they could buy a package of cigarettes until her cheque came in. Being basically broke myself AND the hard-hearted bitch that I am (LOL), I said no. This was followed by some rather pitiful begging that went on for quite awhile.

Finally, it was suggested by this friend that perhaps she could do something for me (which would be in addition to eventually paying me back of course). I still did not want to do this for a variety of bitchy and non-bitchy reasons. However, said friend can be pretty compelling with her arguments.

She made a semi-serious offer to arbitrate between a "old" friend of ours (mostly mine) who had told us a few months ago that he wasn't interested in hanging out with us (and so basically was saying he didn't want to be friends anymore for some very obscure reasons).

I jokingly decided to make up a list of "demands" that I had for her if I were to consider lending her this money. The idea originally was to make it so onerous that she would give up on her quest to nag me into lending her the money. This was because I, one, didn't really have more than almost the exact amount she needed left myself until my next cheque came in (literally a few dollars more - less than five) -that being the non-bitchy reason. Then there was the bitchier reason that I myself am not a smoker as I said and thought that after three days she should just try to consider that quitting smoking for three days and just not restart. Easy for me to say.

Well, anyways, long story made (relatively) shorter, in writing the "jokingly" onerous list of demands, I actual started becoming invested in them. Also, I was starting to see her side of it (though not enough to want to give up on any of my "demands"). So after a "brutal" round of negotiating that literally went to the brink we reached an agreement that saw her get basically my last $10. Literally.

In exchange for this, one of the four conditions I had was that, like she suggested, she had to call this (former) friend of ours once a week for two months to advocate on my (our?) behalf. I was having some second thoughts about this as I didn't know how he (the mutual -former- friend) would react. Especially since, my girlfriend was even less in his "good books" than I was. But before I had conclusively decided to tell her to hold off on calling him for the first of the eight calls she was to make, she had swiftly decided to get her obligations dealt with.

That brings us to the title of this post. When she called me to tell me that she had made the first call and to tell me how it went she told me that she had told "our friend" that she was contractually obligated to call him once a week for the next two months. LOL. I myself found the term funny in a grandiose way. Apparently, his take on it was, according to her, that "we are twisted". LOL.

So, there you have it. I am not only a heartless bitch who enters into onerous contracts with my "friends" but also a twisted person. LOL. Or, as I would like to think of it, I am a compassionate but business-like person who has a unique (as opposed to twisted) way of looking at/doing things. What do you think?

Carmen