Confirmations

I will preface this by saying this isn't a serious issue. Not for me, not for anyone I'm sure. It's just one of those things I could totally see a Seinfeld or Curb episode being about. And it can be annoying. It's almost always annoying, especially for someone like me that doesn't change plans, cancel plans, or is ever late. Ever.

The Confirmation. And I'm not talking about the Sacrement. I'm talking about when you make plans and the other person is the kind that just HAS to confirm, sometimes more than once.

To me, when you make the plan, that's it. Unless the other person has some kind of issue, I'm showing up. Dinner Tuesday night at 7p at Houstons? Yup. I'm coming. That's the end of it. But that doesn't seem to be the way the majority of the population does things. Except for my husband. He's with me on this one. I admit that I do forget about school happenings and walking at night if I don't put them on the calendar. But dinner? A night out where we have a sitter? Nothing short of losing an appendage is stopping me. If E got sick and I had plans, B would deal with it. There is pretty much nothing that's forced me to bail on a previously scheduled engagment.

Everyone else seems to need to confirm so I'm starting to conform to this. Especially when dealing with friends with kids. So I find I'm checking in the day before in case the shit hit the fan somehow and they aren't going to make it. Which is actually fine. I don't have an issue with this. It's more the "no reason for the confirmation, confirmation".

For instance, here's a head-scratcher. A lady called my store yesterday asking if she comes here could B fix some kind of foreign light fixture. He said that he most likely could. She asked if she could come the next day. He said he wouldn't be in but when she comes I would call him and he'd come in. He thought that was the end of it and that she'd show up while he was out. He told me about her but she called on a different number, Picken answered not knowing what B told her, she asked if B was at work and he said no. So she asked for B to call her because she wanted to confirm that she should come today. He happened to stop in but not until much later. He called her, and she said she didn't come because he wasn't there. Had she not called again needing that confirmation, she could've just came in & I would've called him to come in. Instead she had to make it more complicated. She's supposed to come in tomorrow and I guarantee she calls again tomorrow instead of just coming like she's supposed to do.

I feel like there is always confusion and miscommunication with the confirmation. You make a plan, then you go for the confirmation, you don't hear back, so you don't show up. But maybe the person didn't see or hear the text or message asking for the confirmation. The scariest is when I make a plan to go somewhere we HAVE to go, that it would be a big deal to cancel last minute- like a wedding, get a sitter, and then the sitter needs that confirmation a bunch of times. Listen- you're booked. I booked you on x day because I really have something that day. I'm not booking you so I can stare at the wall or watch General Hospital by myself. So don't make me nervous that you think it's casual and I might not REALLY need you. No no, I totally do need you to show up for that evening. With or without confirmation. Unless I call or text saying I don't need you, I NEED you.

Maybe it's just because I never cancel plans that I find this strange. I've gotten in small fender benders and still showed up to appointments or even a dinner date with a friend. So I guess that's why I just don't personally need the confirmation. My father aways needed the confirmation. He'd make plans for dinner for a friday with B and then say, "Ok, I'll talk to you thursday to confirm." And B would say to me- "What for?! We just decided we're meeting on Friday! Why do we need to talk again before? Why can't we just both show up on Friday?!" I mean, it would just be comical. But he needed that confirmation for some reason. B never cancelled prior so I can't for the life of me figure out why but some people are just crazy about it. They NEED it.

I get that a lot of people are flaky. So that would be a good reason to confirm when dealing with those kind of people. Or really busy ones. Like, I kind of need Megan to do it when we walk at night because like I said, I never remember to put that on the calendar since it's always a loose plan. She works full time in the city, she has two kids who get sick and get each other sick a lot. She has to cancel quite a bit. So it's reminder that we are really going. I actually did it with Noreen last week, but only because we've never gone out with them at night before, they have two kids so you never know what can happen. But I felt stupid even doing it because I didn't want her to feel like I thought she might flake out. I just REALLY wanted to go. I was excited to see Noreen & her husband, to go out to dinner without children, and in the interest of full disclosure, I had been thinking about the dessert I was going to order since I'd suggested the restaurant the week before.

Anyway, I know this is a silly blog entry but B and I joke about confirmations all the time. It would totally fit into a show "about nothing". I'm not losing sleep over it but it's one of those things that I feel like I could hear Jerry saying, "And what's the deal with needing the confirmation?" sort of like, "You can TAKE the reservation....you just can't HOLD the reservation...."