Smarties, Babies, and Boss Men
So, I was with them yesterday, Baby, Smartie, and Boss Man. Surprisingly, it was really fun. Baby and Smartie are my neighbors, so they picked me up on the way to see Boss Man. It was over an hour long car ride, so were able to catch up since I haven’t really talked to them in 3 months. I was scared, but I would’ve been more scared if the ride was completely silent, so I kept making up nonsense topics to talk about to fill any empty voids.
After reaching Boss Man’s place, we decided to go out for a drink of coffee since the restaurant we wanted to eat at hadn’t opened yet. While talking and sipping our drinks, Boss Man and I opened up souvenirs the sisters had bought us from their most recent vacation. They gave us each a scented candle and some cookies from the BLACKPINK x Oreo collaboration. In turn, I also had gifts for each of them. When I went out with my friend in my “Expensive Day” post, I bought souvenirs for them as well. It was just some Japanese snacks and hand creams, so nothing too crazy. When we were all talking, I remembered not to talk as much. Not that they ever said I talked too much but that way, by not talking, I wouldn’t accidentally say something wrong to offend them. But, I also remembered not to be completely silent, because if I did, they would find it odd and also say something about my silence.
When we were at the restaurant and looking at the menu, I remembered to stay completely silent. I didn’t want a repeat of what happened last time, so I let them take the reins. There were some things on the menu I wanted to try but I didn’t want to take any chances so I just zipped it. If any of the girls asked “how does this [dish] sound?”, I would wait and see how the other girls would react and just mimic their answers. If they liked it, I would like it too. If the majority didn’t want it, I would say I didn’t want it either. The meal was actually pretty good. It was a dim sum restaurant so we ended up ordering a lot of stuff and ate family-style. There was a bit of a hiccup during the middle of the meal though.
As Baby was eating some of the fried rice, she found a gigantic fly on the plate. By that time, all of us had already ate a portion of the fried rice so when she notified us about it, it made us feel a little queasy. We didn’t want to make a huge scene about it, so Boss Man quietly got the waitress’s attention and showed it to her. In the end, the fried rice was taken off the bill and the store gave us an extra 20% discount. I actually felt really bad for the waitress since she was so nice to us the whole time, and when we showed her the bug, she looked really sad and embarrassed. After getting that whole issue taken care of, my friends no longer had an appetite, mostly due to the fact that the fly was the size of a fat bean. If it was maybe a small gnat, we might’ve had a different reaction, but it was too late. We still had a good chunk of food left and just decided to take it to-go. Before leaving, the waitress came back and gave us complimentary mochi ice cream. That made my heart melt even more for her. The manager already took care of the situation by removing the dish from our bill, but she still went out of her way to give us a free dessert. When paying, my friends were hesitant to leave a good tip, but I argued that it wasn’t the waitress’s fault the fly was in the food. She gave us a great service all throughout, and it was the chef’s mistake in the end, so she shouldn’t have to suffer for something that wasn’t her fault.
After dim sum, we had plans to hit up the mall. On the ride there, the topic of bowling came up, and it was revealed the none of the sisters had ever gone bowling. Boss Man has apparently played a lot, and I’ve went bowling once but that was maybe 5 years ago and I sucked. Inside the mall was a Round One (arcade) and we thought we should try our hands at bowling in there. As predicted, I sucked, again. I scored 49 points, while Baby, who had never played before, was using her non-dominant hand and wasn’t wearing glasses, crushed all of us with a score of 72. It was really fun. Only Boss Man was able to get a strike and most of the throws in all were gutter balls.
We were done with the game and turned straight around to karaoke. We thought we would be able to search up songs on YouTube and sing along to them, but nope. The system only has a certain selection of English songs to choose from, so that crushed our Kpop-loving dreams. We were still able to belt it out to some Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande (which omg can you believe her scandal?). Ever since I was young, I exclusively listened to K-pop, so I don’t really know all the 2000’s classics. I’d know the chorus and that’s basically it, so for most of the karaoke, it was my friends singing. I was vibing in the background, and would sing sans microphone whenever the song’s chorus would come up. There was 3 hours until one of the other restaurants we wanted to go to would open up, so our plan was to karaoke for an hour and spend the rest of the time going around the mall. Yea that did not happen at all. Smartie and Boss Man were too into it, so after the first hour passed, they sent me out to the front desk to pay for another hour, and after that hour, the girls wanted another hour on top. So basically, we spent all 3 hours singing till our hearts content. It was fine by me. The vibes were just right, and I was able to take on the role of DJ while my friends just needed to sing. By the end, all of their voices got pretty hoarse and it was pretty funny to hear them talk.
All of us were hungry at the end and decided on a Korean restaurant that had raw marinated crabs. Sounds skeptical, I know, but I saw TikTok videos of people trying them and wanted to see what the hype was about. On the ride there, I fell asleep for a couple minutes since I’d only slept an hour the night beforehand. Boss Man was scrolling on her phone and Smartie was giving Baby the directions. I woke up from the ride maybe 7 minutes later and was super out of it. Even though it was short nap, my dreams were going crazy and in the beginning, my body even did that little thing where my dream made me think I was falling in real life and it shocked itself awake. I felt groggy the first few minutes after, and out of left field, Smartie brings up the driving conflict we had a while back. I don’t even think I was talking in the conversation because of how tired I still was, but I hear Smartie say, “Yeah Lia, you said can’t drive around these roads, but you can drive all the way to the beach.” She giggled at her own comment and Boss Man supported it by snickering.
The whole driving conflict/situation was for yesterday. A week before, we were all on call to make the plans for yesterday. Even though Smartie and Baby are my neighbors, they have a separate apartment that's closer to their school. The map layout would be, Smartie and Baby at X, me at Y, and Boss Man at Z. X to Z is a 2 hour ride, and Y (where I live) is directly in the middle. Usually, we would split up driving so everyone gets a chance to drive and no one would feel like they’re being taken advantage of as a chauffeur. Smartie and Baby would drive from X to Y, I would drive them to Z, and when we hangout in the cities around where Boss Man lives (at Z), Boss Man would be the one drive us around her town. Boss Man knows her town’s roads the best anyways. Even when they would visit me at Y or we would hangout at X, if we were in our respective cities, we would be responsible for driving since it makes the most sense for the person who knows the roads the best to be driving. However, since it’s summer, Baby and Smartie are at their parent's house right now and are just a few houses down from me. When the topic of driving came up, I offered to drive Baby and Smartie to Z, and added that when we’re at Z, Boss Man can take over and drive. I said, “Boss Man can drive around there since I don’t know those streets.”
That’s when Boss Man gets defensive and says, “Oh but you can drive all the way to the beach for your other friends?” I try to explain to them that when I go somewhere new, I need someone who’s familiar with the roads to be able to sit there and coach me. Boss Man argued that she knows the road and she can play navigator if I drive. The rest chime in agreeing with her. That made sense to me so I accepted it and told everyone that I’ll drive all of us then. Boss Man says she wants to be ‘passenger princess’ for this hangout and I don’t say anything. That gets settled and the topic changes, but after a while, Baby suddenly says that she’s willing to drive. I try to fight her on it and say that I’ll drive. I just got so much shit from them, so I don’t want to back down after already getting talked down on.
Baby insists, but I keep saying that I’ll drive. Then, her sister, Smartie, scoffs, “Wow Lia why do you want to drive so bad?” This gave me insane whiplash. Did they not just make a huge scene when I didn’t want to drive? Now that I say I want to drive, they also have something to say? I give up and hand it over to the self proclaimed ‘passenger princess’ to choose. She seems reluctant all the sudden, so with more pushing from Smartie, it gets settled that Baby will drive. They get the excuse that since Baby and Smartie shares a car, they can switch drivers if needed. Fucking whatever. I checked out for the rest of the conversation and went on autopilot mode.
This is why it gives me another whiplash when Smartie brings the topic up again so condescendingly. Did I not say I would drive? Was it not you guys that adamantly offered to drive instead? I don’t fucking see what the problem is, because at this point you just brought it upon yourselves. If you really didn’t want to drive, then why fight me when I already agreed to be your fucking personal chauffeur? But of course, I’m a fucking coward, so I don’t fight them. I’m also scared that if I do, it will be met with even more hostility, so I muster up a smile and laugh along. And also, it was such a good day so why fucking ruin for everybody else, am I right?
Anyways, we get to the restaurant and, again, I don’t say anything when looking at the menu. They end up getting corn cheese, spam kimchi fried rice, spicy raw marinated crabs, Korean bossam, and a seafood pancake. I would not recommend eating all of that in one sitting because it left my breath smelling GNARLY. All of that is oyster, fermented shrimp, raw crab, chives, raw garlic, and fermented vegetables. Most of you might be wondering how the crabs tasted. It was very rich and soft. Kinda reminded me of uni/sea urchin. The meat was just a little bit funky but the marinade helped mask that part of the taste. It was also really spicy. After 3 or 4 pieces, everyone was kind of over it. The rest of the food was hitting and luckily, there was no fly in the fried rice this time.
After food, we got boba, played a few drinking games (taking sips of our boba in place of shots of alcohol), and went home. The whole day was fun, but there were just small jabs at me. I don’t know if it’s me being too sensitive or butthurt. Smartie did say that I get butthurt too easily. I don’t know.
I was really good with stopping my habits that day though. I have a type of phrase I say when I want to say thank you, but Smartie and Boss Man finds it annoying. The whole day there were so many moments I almost slipped up and said it, but I was able to catch myself just before it left my lips and changed it to a regular thank you. However, it seems that putting one habit down will give birth to a new one. After picking up Boss Man and driving to the first restaurant, I let out a gasp. I don’t even remember what it was about. I could’ve seen a cool building, a pretty bird, or recollected a memory of something I wanted to talk to them about. Anyways, Smartie, who was driving, said, “You know when you did that, it activated my fight or flight.” It makes sense since I’ve also felt it happen to me before. When someone does that, you’re so concentrated on driving and hearing a gasp will make you think something urgent or bad happened. Boss Man chimes in saying how annoying it is and Smartie even admitted, “Maybe it’s cause I’m driving, but this is making me highly irritable.” Either way, I kept making that mistake throughout the day like if I saw some news on Instagram or something, and each time all the girls would shoot me a dirty look and commented on how annoying it was.
I would normally understand it because I’ve been in this situation too BUT the only reason why I bring it up is because on the last ride to drop Boss Man off at her house, I heard her make a gasp like I did. Because of how much shit they were giving me throughout the day about it, I thought they would say something to her too but NOPE. No one said anything. I was darting my eyes around the car like a madwoman. But, whatever, I didn’t bring it up cause I didn’t want to create problems. Also, it might be important to note that Boss Man is kind of like the ‘leader’ of the group, so maybe the other two were scared to call her out on it.
TLDR: I met with my friends. We ate, played bowling, sang karaoke, and tried new foods. Even though it was fun, there were still mini jabs at me and it makes me question if I”m just too sensitive or butthurt.