Two of my closest friends currently live in the UAE, and I’ve been checking up with them ever since the attacks started if they were okay. If y’all don’t know by now, a lot of people around my age group have been pretty chill about the attacks since the UAE government has been fighting back vigorously (according to the news). I’ve been very concerned for them, so I call them up every few days or so to check up on how they’re doing, and they’ve lowkey been very chill about it. This one time, both of them heard a missile being intercepted, looked out the window and immediately got back to having a normal conversation. They’ve even been making lighthearted jokes about the missiles.
I’m usually the kind of person to adjust my humour to the person I’m talking to, so once I realised that they were kinda joke-y about the whole situation, I started making them too. But only if they made it first.
Today, I called one of them because I heard news of an apartment in Kuwait getting attacked, and I wanted to check up on her. She said that she was fine, and then she started joking about her dying and what I would do if she did. After we had a conversation about that, I told her something along the lines of "They’re probably only going to attack important regions like the Burj or places where super-rich people live…" and then she flipped out. She started screaming at me, saying that she’s scared shitless since she lives 15-20 minutes away from the Burj and her dad’s flying in from her hometown tomorrow, so she was already worried about that. She said I was joking about it too much, just because it was not serious to me, but it was to her, and I told her that it is serious for me and I’m very concerned for her and her family, and I only ever joked about it because she had been doing it since the beginning. She screamed at me some more (I couldn’t hear her for the most part as her internet was weak at the time), and then she hung up on me.
I really don’t know if I did something wrong here because yesterday, they were the most humorous they had ever been about the situation. I only ever tried to match their mood or not stress them out too much, as they were taking it very lightly. I know attacks like this aren’t supposed to be joked about, but this friend of mine genuinely flips out all the time if I don’t match her mood. If I say anything slightly that isn’t vibe, she throws a fit and picks a fight with me, so I’ve learn to just match her mood most of the time.
Please do let me know if I am the asshole here.