K.I.T.

i know i'm not alone here; stay with me for a second.
so i'm the first one to admit that i'm not good at keeping in touch with people. i don't know why exactly, it's just one of those things. i think about people all the time--friends, family, acquaintances i haven't seen in forever--i mean i really think about them. how they are, what's going on with them, when their birthday is, if they ever bought those shoes, etc. but somehow there's this disconnect between me thinking "i really should call 'x'" and the act of picking up the phone to do so. why? i don't know. and i don't discriminate-it's aunts, grandmas, siblings, friends from high school, friends from college, friends with whom i'm reunited after no contact for a decade, everybody. there are one or two exceptions, but that's about it. and then there's this bizarre guilt- and then it goes from a week to a month to six months. it's awful.

and here's my point: facebook and myspace make it so much worse. because now not only do i think about people and not call them, i can lurk about on their profile pages, leave a comment or two and feel like i've kept in touch, but i haven't. it's creepy actually, when you think about it. am i a social network junkie? eeesh.

classic example: i have a friend from high school (several, come to think of it. this applies to several friends from high school...or college. see?) to whom i was always close. we lost touch in college, then found each other again early this year. one or two emails back and forth, he sends me a link to his blog to catch me up on his life, and we say we should make plans to have dinner with our respective partners and/or friends. fast forward eight months, we still haven't met up or really talked, but i check his blog periodically to a) see what's up, and b) because i find him endlessly entertaining. KGB and i run into his wife at a local music festival this past weekend, but he's nowhere to be seen. of course, i recognize her from his blog and his photos, and that's when i become that person. i introduce myself to his poor unsuspecting (i assume) wife, who was very polite, explain why i recognize her and apologize for what's probably an awkward encounter, but as i did it, i realized that i was in completely new and uber creepy territory. interchange that festival and that friend with any of a dozen other friends and situations, and i'm in the same place again and again. we all have this knowledge of what's going on with each other, but with no firsthand experience to back it up. it's empty. it's isolating. it's just frigging bizarre. it's the classic complaint of the last century--we keep coming up with ways to make our lives easier, to save time, to lose weight, to be happier, to save money, to keep in closer contact, and we end up with exactly the opposite.

so what do we do? what do we do when we have every conceivable means of keeping in touch, but all we do is get further apart?

i'm gonna go get some ice cream. call me.