the "we should totally hang soon!!" friend who has never once picked a day

There's a friend in your life who has said "we should totally hang soon!!" so many times it has stopped being a sentence and started being a sound. A little chime. A goodbye jingle. It means as much as "drive safe" and commits you to exactly as much.

Her name is Priya, and she has now done this ELEVEN times in a row. I counted. I have a spreadsheet. We need to talk about it.

the crime, prosecuted

Let me walk you through the evidence, your honor.

Every single time we part ways, Priya grabs my forearm with the intensity of someone about to confess a life-changing secret, looks me dead in the eyes, and says: "okay but we should TOTALLY hang soon, I mean it this time."

"I mean it this time." She has said "I mean it this time" four separate times. That is a phrase that gets weaker every time you say it, Priya. That's like a coupon that expires the moment you mention it.

Here is the thing she has never once done, in recorded human history: propose a date. Or a time. Or a place. Or a general season. Or a decade. The invitation exists entirely in the abstract, a beautiful theoretical hangout that lives in a dimension we will never physically access, like a gym membership or a book club we started in 2021.

• March 3rd, leaving brunch: "we should totally do this again soon!!" (we have not done this again)
• April 19th, in the Trader Joe's parking lot: "omg we NEED to hang, I miss you." (the missing continues, unaddressed)
• June 2nd, over text, 11:47pm, out of nowhere: "thinking abt you we have to catch up soon 🥺" (I replied "yes!! when are you free?" She has not been free. She has never been free. There is no free.)

Eleven. Consecutive. Non-invitations.

the "soon" is doing so much heavy lifting

Let's discuss the word "soon," because Priya has bent it into a shape God did not intend.

To a normal person, "soon" implies a rough timeframe. Next week. This month. Before the heat death of the universe. To Priya, "soon" is a mood. A gesture toward warmth. A vibe emitted to signal "I like you" while committing to nothing, the friendship equivalent of a thumbs-up react on a message that deserved actual words.

"we should totally hang soon!!" — Priya, every time, to everyone, forever

And I know it's not just me. I've seen her do it to Dani at a birthday party. Same forearm grab. Same eye contact. Same "I mean it this time." Dani nodded like she believed it. Dani, my sweet summer child. There is no it. There is no time.

The wildest part? If you actually CALL the bluff — if you pull out your phone and say "great, what about Thursday?" — Priya's entire nervous system reboots. You can watch it happen. "Thursday, oh, Thursday is kind of... let me look at my week and get back to you." She will not get back to you. Getting back to you is not a feature that ships in this model. This is a recurring pattern in the ecosystem of flaky friends, and Priya is its patron saint.

why we're not actually mad (we're mostly mad)

Here's the loving part, because there is one.

Priya isn't a bad friend. When you are genuinely in crisis, she shows up. She helped me move a couch up three flights of stairs in July and did not complain once, and she brought Gatorade. The "we should hang soon" thing isn't malice — it's that she has confused the feeling of wanting to see people with the logistics of actually seeing them, and nobody has ever made her pick one.

She wants the hang. She loves the hang. She just cannot be the one to schedule the hang, because scheduling requires converting warm fuzzy intention into a cold hard calendar event, and that transaction breaks something deep in her brain. She is a person of pure vibes, allergic to a specific Tuesday.

So here's what we're going to do about it.

You will be the one with the calendar. Yes, it's unfair. Yes, she should do it. She won't. Stop waiting for Priya to name a date the way you'd stop waiting for a houseplant to text you. Next time she says "we should totally hang soon!!", do not nod. Do not say "yes we should!!" back, feeding the loop. Say: "You're right. Thursday, 7pm, that taco place. I'm putting it in my phone right now, watch me do it." Give her a real thing to say yes to. Nine times out of ten, cornered by an actual plan, she shows up and has a wonderful time and says, unironically, at the end: "omg we should do this more often!!"

And then the cycle begins anew. But at least you got tacos.

Some crimes deserve a stern text. This one deserves a card — something she can pin to her fridge, look at every morning, and slowly understand. A little note that says, with love: pick a day, you beautiful, non-committal disaster.

If Priya, or your own personal Priya, has said "soon" one too many times, make her a card. Merciless about the crime. Ride-or-die about the person. That's the whole thing.