It’s Friday Night…Have You Got Plans?

Friday presents a conundrum to me almost every week. There is this pressure, this sense that I should have a plan, why didn’t I make a plan, what IS my plan? It’s often a night where my significant other likes to join her pals in her far-off village, and thus, I plan accordingly, with a meet-up of my own.

Then there are the regular guys who I like to catch up with…but so many times we are all scattered and busy with different engagements, so we don’t make a rendezvous. Then when I think about going to Northampton from South Deerfield, I have visions of terrifying blue lights and a harsh voice on the other end of a flashlight. Uh oh, don’t want that.

And so it goes, this debate, this endless string of decisions to say yes, or to say no, or to not go anywhere and instead make plans to see these same people during the day, when there aren’t temptations of frosty beers and deep dark glasses of red wine. I disappoint myself in these instances when I don’t go to the big city, instead I simply treat this night, this Friday night, like a regular old Monday or Tuesday.

But when the phone rings, and it’s a friend confirming that YES they want to meet, then it’s game on. Then I energize myself, steel myself for a drive down the big highway, and plunge into full social mode. But when all I have to show for my reach-outs are a bunch of other people’s plans that don’t include me, well, then I duck out and don’t make the scene.