December 20: Friends and Contacts

You're at a bar with some friends when you see a pretty girl across the room. Because you're two or three beers into your stay, you have the confidence to approach her and strike up a conversation. Things go well. She laughs at all of your jokes and she's very easy to talk to. As the night comes to an end, you decide that an exchange of phone numbers would be in every one's best interest. Unfortunately, after meeting up with her a week later, you realize she isn't the one for you.

You're invited to a friend's place for a casual barbecue cookout. In addition to you, he has invited a group of friends from all areas of his life. When you arrive, you introduce yourself to the people you've never met before and thoroughly enjoy every one's company. Conversation topics range from Superbowl hopefuls to recent rises in the stock market. Pictures are taken on digital cameras and iPhones. Throughout the course of the evening, laughs and stories are plentiful and everyone leaves in high spirits. The next day, your Facebook inbox is flooded with new friendship requests from the people from the party. Three years later, you've never seen or talked with any of them.

So here you are with 700 Facebook friends and contacts in your phone labeled as "Sarah (Paul's Cocktails)." Occasionally Facebook lets you know that one of those barbecue cookout friends has a birthday. Are you supposed to write on her wall like everyone else on her friend list and pretend you know her? If she posts an update or a link that you like, is it acceptable to thumbs-up-Like it? And what about those phone contacts? I'm never going to call Steph from the Pig Pen in Allentown, PA or Kathryn whom I met at Hooter's, so why can't I delete their numbers?

Going through my cell phone, I have twenty-three contacts of people that I used to work with and haven't talked to since; and I'm only in the F's! Landlords, employers, drunken approaches, you name it. There's a "Diana" in there from when I moved here and I was looking for apartments. I never even checked hers out, yet there's her number right next to my surgeon's. When I was in Boston a year and a half ago, I tried getting a hold of an old friend, but she had changed her number; I still have it - the old number. I have the phone number for libraries in California, Pennsylvania, and Texas!

Out of the fifty or so contacts I have, I use five at most. I know, however, that as soon as I delete any of them, I'm going to regret it. Who am I supposed to text on that one night of the year that I get inebriated. How will I get in contact with Steph from the Pig Pen and tell her how I really feel about her town? How am I going to accidentally dial the wrong number when I only have five to choose from?

Up until that moment of dropping our phones into a lake or a toilet, we collect contacts and never dispose of them. Why? We meet a person one time and think it's crucial to add them to our list of Facebook friends. Why? So we can make ourselves feel better by quantifying the number of accessible profiles we have at our fingertips? What am I missing here?