And I Thought Everyone Majored in Communications Now

Matt and I signed up to play mixed doubles tennis together in a flex league--where the system pairs us with opponents and we schedule our own matches, some home and some away--and play starts this week. We are supposed to play one match roughly every week or two weeks. Next week is spring break around here, so though we have until April 8 to play this first match, I thought our first opponents would want to get it played in the next few days. Now, the protocol is that the home team contacts their opponents and suggests a few possible dates. For our upcoming match, we aren't the home team, but I decided to reach out first, because not everyone is fully tuned in to when league play begins and they might need a nudge, and whatever.

So I sent a chirpy little note, something like: Hi guys! I know you're the home team, but I was wondering if y'all might want to squeeze in our match before we all disappear for spring break. Any chance Tuesday,  Wednesday, or Thurs nights might work for you guys? Looking forward to it, just let me know!

Sunshine! Hearts! Flowers!

The wife of the couple wrote back, and this is the entire email:

Becky, our sons have baseball games on Tuesday and Thursday night. Wednesday we have church group at our house. Sorry.

That's it? Sorry? SORRY. Heh omgWTF??!!1

Maybe this is too far up the behiney of our particular circumstances for you guys to get what a dumb-cluck, pointless response this was. I wanted to write back, okay, what about the part where you offer some alternate times? Like Kramer on Seinfeld when he pretended to be the Moviefone: "Why don't you TELL me when you'd like to play tennis?" Or why don't you in any way understand the business we're conducting here? Or just DO YOUR FREAKING JOB AS A PERSON?

And the frustrating thing is that it is still her job to schedule this match. Does she not know this? She basically rebuffed my attempt to get us started in this process. Is this going to be a case where she waits too long and then expects me to rearrange our schedule to accommodate her lack of planning? For the love.

This is right in the wheelhouse of things that drive me crazy and therefore may not be intelligible to others, I don't know. But I swear, reading her note was super DUPER irritating, because she made me feel like I was bothering her or asking her a favor. The favor of playing this match she signed up to play. God!

We are squarely in the realm of My Issues, because even now, hours later, Reader, I am so annoyed by this. It's like, you don't have to be the Homecoming Queen, but it is possible to be so bad at social labor that it just turns me right against you. And it's hard to recover, though not impossible.

I mean, is it me or is it her? It's her right?

LOL

The way this works is that we are going to beat them one way or another, hopefully by playing tennis--I looked at their last season and they never won a match--but possibly by forcing them to appear at some inconvenient default play time or else forfeit. I don't know. But GEEZ.

Okay I'll simmer down now.

So I wrote right back to her and said that I understood completely and that I would wait for her to get back to us with some times when they were available. I restrained myself from telling her the ball was in her court.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? xoxo