NEW YORK — Local 36-year-old loser Ryan Buttermyer reportedly maintained a heroic ten-minute wait period before confirming he’d be at a party, despite having absolutely nothing happening in his sad little life otherwise, sources confirmed amid cringes.
“I knew I’d come off as too eager if I responded right away, so I decided to buckle down, keep my cool, and wait until my Hungry-Man Dinner was finished microwaving before popping off a ‘I’ll be there with bells on!’” said the almost impressively lame Buttermyer, not realizing how desperate that still sounds. “I mean, as I was watching the clock tick down those ten minutes, I could just picture them probably thinking ‘Is Ryan even coming? Do we have his correct contact information?’ But, that’s what you gotta do if you want to seem cool. Oh, speaking of, I should ask if I should bring some jigsaw puzzles. Imagine me strolling in with an armful of 500-piece ‘Covered Bridges of the American South’ fashionably late at four minutes past the start time!”
Buttermyer’s coworker, whose birthday is the celebration in question, confirmed that the invitation was one of pity.
“I mean, he was still the first one to say he was attending by a mile. No question about it. In fact, I don’t think any of my ‘actually’ cool friends will take the time to RSVP at all, because they have other things in their lives that need their attention,” said party-thrower Denise Coulier, a begrudging acquaintance of Buttermyer. “Honestly, we only invited Ryan because he cleans up everyone’s dishes as the night goes on, since nobody’s ever really talking to him for more than a few seconds. The trick is getting him to leave at the end of the night, though. Last time my partner and I straight up pretended to fall asleep and we still had to suffer through his tuck-ins and lullabies for another 40 minutes. Ugh, on second thought, maybe we should cancel and reschedule when we know he’s out of town…but when is that guy EVER out of town?”
Leading social therapist Dr. Yeoman Frey says that Buttermyer is not alone in his inability to play it cool.
“In many ways, it could be compared to sexual ‘edging’ where the loser or outcast in question pushes themselves to the brink of sanity trying to play off that they aren’t over the moon excited to be included in any social function once invited,” said Dr. Frey, who was clearly speaking from experience, judging by his empty wall calendar. “Actually I could show you a real-life example if you knew of anything going on right now…do you? Not that I don’t have anything better to do with my time, of course, but, if you did know of anything I could check my schedule… move some stuff around. No? Yeah, no, I have literally no wiggle room in my night tonight anyway, yeah. Maybe some other evening though?”
At press time, Buttermyer was seen to already be scouting out his parking location for next week’s gathering out of sheer boredom.