Hi, and thanks for stopping by! It’s spring break for me right now. (Picture me doing a “happy dance” here.) Yay, no school for two weeks! For the past week and a half it’s been deadlines for big assignments and tests. So, I’ve been pretty busy with studying and finishing up my papers. Around this same time, my mom and dad were planning a big party in May. They’re letting me invite a bunch of my friends—perhaps so I don’t complain about their probably-boring party? Although they’d given me several weeks’ notice to come up with my guest list, I kind of procrastinated.
Unfortunately for me, they wanted to send the invitations out before spring break. They were (semi-politely) on my tail in the weeks leading up to vacation. When I didn’t act, they gave me a deadline—the weekend before break. “No list, no friends” was the consequence if I didn’t come up with my names. That got me moving. However, as you might’ve guessed, I rushed to put together my list. I wish I hadn’t procrastinated. I was glad my parents were letting me invite some friends, but I just didn’t feel like thinking about my list then. I had a lot of classes to focus on. So, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. And wouldn’t you know it? I made a mistake. As in, I accidentally forgot to invite one of my friends. A “messed guest list” if you will.
I’m sure you can imagine how horrible I felt. And this wasn’t even the first time I slipped up when it came to parties. (Remember this blog?) But I learned an important life lesson from the experience: be honest and own up to your mistakes. And then do your best to immediately make things right. Especially if it’s not too late to fix things. In other words, if you drop the ball, try to pick it up quickly.
Here’s what happened…
Talk of the town
I feel pretty fortunate in that I have a bunch of friends from different parts of my life. There are my school friends. My soccer friends. My tennis friends (did I tell you I’m taking lessons?). My religious school friends. My camp friends.
Anyway, I had to think about exactly which friends I wanted to invite to the party. My very best friends were, of course, the ones I’d immediately put on my guest list. And then there were some other people that I was pretty friendly with that I also wanted to include.
I had to make some difficult choices. I couldn’t invite everyone. But there were a handful of kids who were all part of the same friend group whom I did want to invite. However, in my haste to finish the list as quickly as possible, I forgot to invite one girl, Jane. Jane is a super nice person, and we’ve been friends since kindergarten. But she isn’t in any of my classes this year, so she wasn’t exactly on my radar screen. She is, however, friends with a lot of the same people I’m friendly with. The very same people that I’d put on the guest list for the party.
It wasn’t until I saw my mom talking to Jane’s mom at the supermarket this Friday that I thought to myself, I don’t think Jane was on the guest list.
As soon as I got home from the supermarket—after helping my mom unpack the groceries—I went back to look at my guest list. No sign of Jane’s name anywhere. Talk about a messed guest list. Either all my invited friends were focused on spring break, or they were being respectful. None had asked me, “Noodle, why didn’t you invite Jane to the party?” I sort of wish one of them did, because I would have realized my mistake about forgetting Jane earlier on. Argh!
A slice of humble pie
What was I to do? Just about all of our friends in common had been invited to the party. I felt sick to my stomach. What if Jane thought that I didn’t invite her on purpose? Or, worse, what if she thought I was mad at her for some strange reason? Even though I’m pretty sure she knew we were on good terms, I didn’t see her at school all that often. So, who knows what she must’ve thought?
I tried making myself feel better by imagining that Jane probably didn’t even know about the party. There’s that saying, “what you don’t know won’t hurt you,” right? But I didn’t know what Jane did or didn’t know. Is it me, or is this thought process is getting confusing?
Anyway, I really did want Jane to come to the party. I thought about my options. First, I could come up with an elaborate story about how Jane’s invitation got sent back as undeliverable. Maybe because of an incorrect address or something. No. That wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to lie. Then I thought, maybe I could quietly invite Jane after the fact? As in, I wouldn’t mention that the invites already gone out. But that felt kind of wrong, too. What if Jane knew the invites had already gone out?
The other option—the most embarrassing one—was owning up to my mistake. To be honest and tell Jane that I’d forgotten to invite her initially, but that I’d really meant for her to come. I just had to hope Jane wouldn’t be upset. That she would understand that I wasn’t as careful as I should’ve been when I first made the guest list. In other words, my messed guest list was a one-hundred percent slip-up on my part.
Maybe I was overthinking things. Maybe all of this didn’t matter. An invitation is an invitation, no matter how it came to you. Ugh! Darn my guilty feelings.
Coming clean
I decided to go with honesty is the best policy. I told Jane that the party invitations had “recently” been sent out. But I had come to realize after the fact that her name accidentally wasn’t on my list—and it should have been. Jane was silent when I told her this news. I wasn’t sure what to make of her reaction. (Or lack thereof.) So, in true blabbermouth Noodle fashion, I kept talking.
I then said, “But I really want you to come, and I feel horrible that I screwed up. I hope you understand it was a mistake. It was all because I wasn’t careful. That’s it. Plain and simple.” Jane smiled politely when I finally stopped talking. She said she’d ask her mom if she was free.
I felt better after coming clean to Jane. Given that a bunch of our other friends had RSVP’d that they were coming to the party, I thought Jane would immediately respond “yes”—messed guest list or not.
But no. Jane still hasn’t responded, and the RSVPs are due back in two weeks. But thanks to my messed guest list, Jane only got her invitation a few days ago. So, it’s not really fair of me to expect an instant response.
Good things come to those who wait?
While I’m glad I caught my mistake with enough time before the party, I wish I hadn’t made the error in the first place. Sure, I dropped the ball. Nobody’s perfect, right? But if I’m being honest, my messed guest list was probably a mistake that could’ve been avoided. I shouldn’t have made the list when I was under pressure. And when I did finally make the list, I rushed and cut corners.
So, I guess there were actually three lessons I learned from this experience: don’t procrastinate, don’t rush, and be honest if you’ve done the first two things and then made a mistake because of it.
I’ll have to let you know if the party in May is a success…and I’m sure you can’t wait to find out if Jane ended up attending. That makes two of us.
Until next time, be your best you.
Do you have any stories about learning an important lesson from an experience? Please share with them me in the comments section!
