I’ve had a lot of friends over the years. Some have stayed in my life and others have disappeared only to pop back a few years (or decades) later. For the most part I’m pretty easy-going and no matter how long you’ve been my friend, I’m pretty lenient. It takes a LOT to make it on my permanent enemies list, and even then, I’m willing to give you another chance if you’re truly committed to change.
This post isn’t for my close friends who are still very much part of my circle and know who they are, though. This post is for the people (specifically other moms, but it can apply to anything, really) who have been in my life at one point who may or may not think I hate them now or that we can’t hang, or that I’d purposely freeze them out if they were to call and ask for a playdate.
To be honest, when I say I’m busy, I really AM busy. “Busy” to me is code for “I have a lot of crap to do, that may or may not be at home, and I can’t get it all done if I have you over” or else “I just finished a lot of crap that had to be done and/or stressed me out and really I just NEED to take a breather”. In both cases I DO want to see you, but just not that particular day. I’m not fun to be around when I’ve got a million things on my mind and being an introvert, I NEED to have that down time away from people or I will go crazy.
But being “busy” still has more to do with what’s going on in my brain and very little to do with how I feel about you. Because if I don’t like you, chances are I blocked your number. If you’re still on my friends list, then I don’t hate you.
So that being said, here are the 15 guidelines I have come up with to indicate whether or not a playdate could be in our future:
2) If you feed your kid formula, we can still hang
3) If you don’t cosleep, we can still hang
4) If you would never ever want an unmedicated birth, we can still hang
5) If you have different political/religious views, we can still hang
6) If you have different tastes in music/movies but we have other things in common, we can hang
7) If you are totally cool if I have to cancel our date because something came up, and you don’t take it personally because life totally happens and you get it, we can hang
8) If you forget that we had a play date but apologize when you remember, it’s okay. We can still hang
9) If your kid smacks my kid and you then say “hey, kid, not okay!” Or something to that effect, we can still hang
10) If my kid hits your kid and then your kid hits back in retaliation and you don’t freak out, we can hang
11) If you don’t flip out because I let my kid watch TV/eat McDonald’s/ climb on furniture/insert other controversial parenting issue, we can hang
12) If you don’t take my choices in how I raise MY kids or give birth to said kids personally just because you do the opposite, we can hang
13) If you don’t berate me for choosing the opposite thing you did and don’t try to make me feel bad or wrong for those choices (see my don’t be an asshole posts) then we can hang
14) If you are willing to discuss disagreeing viewpoints in a constructive and informative way, without judgment and without expectations that I will somehow decide you “win” the debate, then we can hang
15) If you can’t make a strong effort not to be an asshole, then we can’t hang.