Well, here’s a terrible position you never want to see someone in: This man just got invited last minute on a super fun canoe trip that all his friends had clearly been planning for weeks behind his back until someone bailed and they needed another guy.
Damn, bro. That can’t feel good.
Twenty-eight-year-old personal trainer Christian Leonard loves going on outdoor trips with his buddies, so when he got invited along on a river float on the Blackfoot River in Montana with seven of his closest friends, he was initially overjoyed. But soon, he saw signs of every man’s worst fear: that he was actually being called up as a last-choice alternate after another guy bowed out at the last minute.
The first sign that this trip had actually been in the making for some time was the fact that it was sprung on Christian by surprise, giving him only a few days to pack—there was simply no way that all the rest of the guys had signed on to such a major expedition with just 72 hours notice. Another was that he was added to an existing group chat called “Canoeing Budz” which already had all seven of the other guys in it, and they’d seemingly developed all sorts of inside jokes and made-up slang terms related to the trip. Equally damning was the fact that the campsites for the trip were already reserved, something you normally have to do months in advance. But the real dagger to the heart for Christian came when he found out that the canoe he would be paddling with his friend Markus actually belonged to another friend, Jon, who had posted a positive COVID test to his Instagram story just a few hours before Christian was invited on the trip.
Horrible. Now Christian has to decide whether he wants to humiliate himself by going on a super fun trip with the full knowledge that all eight of his compatriots consider him a backup friend, or hold on to his pride by making up a reason that he can’t go and staying home to watch Top Chef alone.
Ugh. This is rough
Christian has to give his friends an answer like, right now, otherwise they’ll probably start offering his slot to Cameron’s work buddy who no one else really knows or Jerry’s weird cousin who just got out of the Army. However, if Christian does end up deciding to take a hit to his dignity and go on the trip, maybe he could try to lay off the booze this time to avoid the types of sloppy, confrontational behavior he exhibited on the last few canoe trips the fellas invited him on. As much as he may want to drown the humiliation of being the last resort friend in alcohol, doing so will only further cement his undesirable social position.
