I remember my first cell phone. It was roughly the size of a cinder block, but less pleasing in appearance and function. I think my first cell contract was $30 for 30 minutes. I'm not kidding. And a portion of a minute rounded up. In other words, you could make fifteen 65 second calls and you were over your limit and getting jacked for about a buck a minute (or portion thereof).
Not so today. Kels and I have a family plan that would allow us to call Bogata for Time & Temperature as often as I wanted. I have more minutes than George Bush has backers right now. Nationwide. Plus free weekends, free evenings and free whenever to T-mobile phones. All that to say I never have an excuse to not make a call any more. Never...
In spite of easy access, I regularly wonder "What happened to..." and "Why haven't they called?"
It hit me the other day that if I really wanted to stay connected with people, I'd come home with a drained phone battery every day and use all my cell minutes. Instead, it's easier to not call. It's easier to not connect, easier not to call, easier to wonder why we disconnected, even though I have their number in my phone and could, at no cost, call them and find out.
Kelsey and I have moved all over the eastern half of the country. We've fallen in love with people only to pack up and move on. Every time we've watched them grow small in the rear window and told one another "but we'll stay connected to THEM. They're like family....". I must have eight or ten people like that, yet quickly, the calls stop (both ways) and we're both left wondering.
To be fair, relationship is anchored in two directions - a common history and a common future. That's what you do with friends. You reminisce and you scheme. You look back and you look forward. When you move away, you disconnect with the common future that you thought you might have had at one point...and conversations become a stilted rehash of the last time you got together. The only thing that's worse than not connecting is reconnecting and finding out that you don't have anything to say.
I have no resolve to this, except to say that I wonder what happened to you. Or me. I think of you often and we talk about you on a regular basis, with a bit of sadness in our hearts because of the widening gap between our lives and yours. And cell minutes left on our account at the end of the month.
How moronic is that.
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