Out of Sight

I'm notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people who I don't see on a regular basis. What makes it worse is that I'm also really bad at returning phone calls, e-mails and the like, so I frequently go months and years without speaking with relatively close friends for... well... no reason at all. This morning I received an e-mail from an old friend informing me that I had "fallen off the edge of the world... again". When I read that I felt somewhat embarrassed and ashamed that I had gone a few months without talking to him, but it really made me think about the several friends who I've gone several months or even years without as much as a phone call.

My elementary school best friend and I went two years without speaking to each other when he went to one of Berkeley's middle schools and I went to the other. History would've repeated itself when my high school best friend went to a JC a massive 20 miles away. Looking back now, I feel like the only thing that kept our friendship going was the fact that he was persistent in calling me. I can't say for sure that I called him once. Not because I didn't want to talk to him... I definitely did... but... really... I don't know. It's something I'm going to have to put some serious thought into.

Right now, I have a handful of friends who I used to hang out with on literally a daily basis who, for no reason at all, I haven't spoken to in months or years. Whenever I stumble upon situations like this, I just chuckle and think of a line from the movie Bad Boys II. The Cuban crime boss is standing in the attic of his mansion watching a rat infestation eat his money. He turns to his henchman and says, "this is a stupid fucking problem to have." The problem of not speaking with my friends has a pretty straight forward one-step solution: speak to my friends. Make more phone calls, send more e-mails, call just to say hey. Set time aside for speaking with people who I don't get to see everyday. Just do it. Just do it.