I'm Busy

Ah, Gentle Reader, but don't those two words just cover such a multitude of sins?  I just used that lovely heinie-saving catch-all today when a tenant in my building whom I encountered on the sidewalk asked me if I was going to the tenants' dinner and meeting today.  I said no.  She tried to emphasize that it's the tenants' MEETING.  I replied "I'm busy" and kept walking.  I might have told this fellow-tenant, whom I don't know well enough to be a friend but well enough to want to avoid getting into an argument with her that at our tenant dinners, even though management has known for years that I am vegetarian, never serve meatless options, outside of perhaps salad and bread.  After years of being insulted by default of course I am not interested.  I was at one of the tenant meetings many years ago.  There was absolutely no room offered for tenants to offer feedback.  It was all about what we have to hear, learn and know in order to be good little tenants and our input is neither needed or wanted.  Our housing provider runs this building like a feudal estate and I will not tolerate being treated like a serf.  None of these things would I tell my nosy fellow-tenant or there would be no end to it.  So, I'm busy.

I don't always approve of the use of this phrase.  It can ruin a friendship, unless the friendship is so dysfunctional and beyond redemption that it has to be put out of its misery.  I have sometimes heard these words from some of the people I have done language exchange with, which sort of makes sense.  It is difficult to carry on doing language work with someone you don't feel a lot in common with or much connection.  This seems to happen more with some than others.  Because of my work in mental health I have become very versatile about the people I can connect and commit with.  Not everyone, perhaps few, have this kind of flexibility.  So after one or two sessions that seem to have gone well they disappear or they say "I'm busy."  It is a bit annoying, but far worse when it comes from someone you've known a while and whom you've come to see as a friend.

I no longer readily accept the excuse "I'm busy."  I challenge it now, and if I don't think that I'm getting a straight answer I simply reply that I never cancel on a friend for being busy unless it's something really serious, like I have to work, I am in hospital, in jail, dead...

I really don't expect to hear from these people again.  Good riddance.