Learning the hard way at someone else’s expense

There is only so far you can push someone’s buttons. Particularly someone who has been so kind to you, has gone out of their way to accommodate you. For example, after a long day at work and a previously communicated need to leave the city as early as possible to avoid an extra hour of road raged traffic, one does not wish to sit in the car for an hour waiting for a lost traveler. That person seems less and less deserving of your familial love, as you try repeatedly to call them, only to get their voicemail, them not having the foresight to bring a cell phone charger nor to have written down your number. You hit the steering wheel, which is uncharacteristic of you — to give in to fits of rage no matter how small. Your mind starts to think about the worst case scenario: your kind-of-sister foreign guest, who is sleeping in your spare room and eating your groceries, who you picked up and will drop off at asinine times at two different airports that are logistically very out of your way, trapped in a van and blindfolded, or perhaps a made-limp body already on its way to the SOMETHING river. What will you tell people? You …lost her? Of course, she’s American. It can’t possibly be her fault.

There’s only so much you can take when she calls you from a Best Western somewhere that requires another 10 minutes of winding and weaving through traffic to get to. She sounds almost happy as you calmly try to explain to her that you just want to go home and you haven’t eaten all day. You don’t tell her that work was really tough, that you tried to leave extra early to have more time together with her and your girlfriend, that it is starting to rain and the traffic and your nerves are compiling quickly. You don’t re-emphasize that you had explicitly told her where to go, and she had gotten lost. Well, isn’t that precious. That’s why when you see her sitting on the curb with an awkward smile and shopping bags — had a lovely day exploring the city did she! — before saying hello you walk out into the street and punch her in the face.

At least that is what I would have done if you were me and I were you and you were the one who had so royally effed up.