It's a Saturday night, the kids are asleep and we have no plans. Before we fall into our routine and watch a movie, I try to talk my husband into playing a card game. Unconvinced, he continues tapping away on his phone. But just before disappearing into the social media rabbit hole, he has an idea. He looks over me and suggests, "Why don't we try calling one of our friends?"
I look at him with raised brows, as if his suggestion is somewhat ridiculous and perhaps even socially unacceptable. You can't just call someone out of the blue now…right? But then I think again and realize that at one point in time, in the not so distant past, this was the norm. I spent my early teenage years connecting with friends through a phone that was connected to a wall. It wasn't "smart", but it allowed me to keep in touch with the latest gossip and news. We would chat for hours, sometimes while I hid under my blanket in order to avoid the chance of being caught by my parents.
I could even memorize the phone numbers of loved ones then. While I did own an address book—and there was always the White Pages, where you could look people up by their names—I had the contact details of special friends, first loves and family members committed to memory. I guess these days, they would be on my "Favorites" list in my smartphone.
Today, many of my "favorite" people are followed from a distance through social media, and even they very rarely—if ever—would get an actual call from me. The birth announcement by my oldest friend is received through catching a well-defined bump into a photo that I scroll past. The news of a divorce from a couple whom I had considered my second parents when I was in middle school arrives after a photo of a woman led me on a quest for more gossip. Bits of such information, a collection of wonderful, exciting, shocking and also boring news, may have been a part of my digital feed for years. The idea of actually picking up the phone to reconnect with a long-lost friend is an intimidating one—even seeing the name of an old friend pop up in an incoming call can feel a little afraid.
I ask my husband, "Who would we call?" After tossing around a few names, we agree on some potential candidates—people whose lives have taken them in different directions, but with whom we still share deep friendships.
