I have a friend who lives in the surburb of my city and doesn’t know how to control any vehicle. As a result I have to go a long way to her home whenever I want to hang out with her, then drop her back home and ride a long way back to my home. There are some problems with my parents: they don’t really trust her, she is a bit too childish and thoughtless for their taste, and because of the long distance most of the time I arrive home very late, which annoys them. So they are kind of disapprove of me hanging out with her for a long time and have set a time limit for me. Therefore whenever she and I hang out, I have to lie to my parents that her father takes her to my city and we will hang out in the city. I can’t talk them out of putting off the time limit because they are too full of themselves and just won’t listen. I always make that fact clear to her each time I come to her home.

Now is the story: this morning we planned to go to a entertainment park. She said it was near her house. I did the same thing I always do and rode to her house and took her with me. I told her that we had to meet the time limit because if we didn’t I would run into lots of troubles with my parents. But as we went on, it became clear that she herself didn’t know where that park was, but she kept on assuring me that we were almost there. I rode for nearly 1 hour until I saw a sign announcing that we still had 11 more miles to go! At this point I gave up. I could see that the time needed to get to that park had exceeded the time remaining for us to spend there. I turned back.

This disappointed her to no end. As it turned out, to my dismay, she was planning to spend all day in the park. She didn’t really make that intention clear to me in the original plan and I thought we would just spend the morning hanging out like the other days. She began to complain why I cared so much for my parents and didn’t ask them for more time. I repeatedly told her that my parents are too strict to listen to me (I didn’t tell her that they don’t like her for fear of hurting her) but she didn’t listen. She kept on complaining for some time. When we went home, she “adviced” me to come clear to my parents that I came to her house and try to talk them into giving me more time to spend with her, because she cared for me.

Her “advice” kind of bugs me. I always tell her about my lie to my parents. If she cares for me, why didn’t she tell me earlier, during one of those days when I told her about my lie, instead of right now, just coincidentally after I had refused to give her something? Is there anything wrong with her advice, or am I at fault here?

Topics: life, friends, family, problems, confusion