I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar….

(This blog is dedicated to Lemon who as of 10 pm today, is still at work.  Here’s to you my friend.)

The other day I decided to look around my phone and came across the phone log’s call timers.  It tracks how long your last call last, total number of hours it was used, yada yada yada.  Here’s what I saw:

(to put these numbers into some context, I’ve had this phone for a little over a year and never reseted the timer)

Duration of all calls:  63:04:32

Duration of received calls: 46:27:21

Duration of dialed calls: 16:37:41

I was shocked to see the disparity between my total hours of received calls and dialed calls.  Made sense of course.  I really don’t like to talk over the phone.  Not entirely sure why either.  I just don’t like it.  Alot.  What little time I do make calls, it’s usually with a goal in mind like "when’s dinner" or "Where the hell are you, we’ve been waiting for over an hour for you?"  Even then  I’d still rather avoid it.  At work, if I had to make a call to someone, I opened up a word program of some kind and start writting out stuff to say so that I don’t stutter during the conversation.  Some lines litteraly reads like this: "Hi, I’m Karli Winata from the ******* ****** ** ******** ***********,  I’m calling in regards to the invoice that you sent us."  Yup.  I had to actually start it with my name so that I won’t forget to say it.  Pathetic I know.  It is 4rth on my list of favored communication.  1st being written, 2nd talking, 3rd instant messaging.

After seeing my stats, I wondered if it’s the same with others.  Here’s your homework.  Post some replies with your phone stats.  If you want you can analyze it for me.  I just want to see other people’s phone timers.

P.S.  This doesn’t work if you’ve recently cleared your call timers.  You can still post it if you want, it’d just won’t be indicative of much.  Also post how long you’ve either owned the phone or since the last time you cleared your timer.

I know I had a theme of the month which took me a month and a half to finish, but I kept forgetting to write.  Sorry ’bout that.  Anyways, here it is.  The last one in my series of "Lost Friends" month.  Enjoy.

Of the four stories about lost friends, this is the one I regret the most.  When I was in college, I had a friend named Linda.  We had Calculus and Physics together.  I remembered seeing her walking into the class and I said to myself "God I wish I get to know her, but if I know my luck…."  For a little while, that was true.  Nothing happened until one fateful day in Calculus.  We were about to take a test when she leaned over and asked me to lend her a pencil.  I was shocked.  She could have easily asked the other people around her, but instead she leaned over in my direction and asked me for a pencil.  I gave her the one I was using.  I could’ve given her my other crappier pencils, but hell, I wanted to put my best foot forward.  It must’ve worked because afterwards, we started talking to each other.

We mainly talked about the two classes we had, but that was better than nothing.  From our little talks, I learned a great deal about her.  Mainly that her situation is…"unique" to say the least.  She was taking classes to get a BS in electrical engineering.  She was living with her boyfriend who also gave her a job at the company that he was working in.   Their job?  Computer programmer.   I’ve never met anyone whose situtation is even remotely similar to hers.  I liked talking to her.  I tried to do so as much as humanly possible, but as usuall, she talked while I listened.

Then one day…she just vanished.

I didn’t find it odd that she didn’t show up for class one day.  Everybody misses a class every once in a while.  It’s on the third consecutive class that she missed that got me worried.  I started to dig deeper than just the two classes we had together.  I visited another class she had and talked to her teacher.  He said she hadn’t show up in his classes as well.  At first I got worried.  I thought something happened between her and her boyfriend, or maybe she got into a car acciddent.  I didn’t know what happened to her at all.  She never showed up for classes ever again.  I eventually let her go.

So what’s the part that I regretted?  Well, about a whole year afterwards, I fell asleep in one of my classes.  When I woke up, I realized I fell asleep on my phone.  I decided to check to see if I accidentally called anyone.  Sure enough I was right.  It did call someone….it dialed Linda’s number.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Of all the phone numbers I had stored in my phone, it had to dial Linda’s number!  I immediately ended the call.  If you think I have trouble talking to people face to face, you should see try to "communicate" over the phone.  It’s usually not pretty.  I didn’t want to call her and have absolutely nothing to say to her even though I had a lot of questions.  It felt like fate had it’s hand on this.  My phone could have easily called my dad or my mom, but instead it called her.  Fate may have wanted me to make a decision for me, but I was simply too afraid.  Funny thing about fate.  Sometimes it can be persistent.

As I put my phone back in my pocket, it rang.  (actually it vibrated.  It was on silent) "Who the devil would call me this early in the morning," I wondered.  My family knew I was in class at this time in the morning.  As if I didn’t need another reason to get a heart attack, Linda is calling me!  Now my mind and heart was racing.  What the hell should I do?  Every bone in my body told me to walk out that classroom and answer the phone.  It would have been easy.  I sat closest to the door.  What did I do?  I just stared at it in utter horror and shock.  Was I finally going to get all of my questions answered?  Could we have picked up where we left off?  Was she single now?  Every single question I hadn’t thought about in over a year resurfaced and paralyzed me.  All I did was stare at my phone with "Linda" blinking on the screen!  After what felt like a minute, it stopped.  For a split second, I was relieved of the burden of making the choice to answer.  Right after it, a wave of regret hit me.  I lost a friend….permanently.

I think I’m a pretty generous guy.  Sure I’ve had moments of frugality, mainly when my bank account starts to share the same shade of red as the blood dripping out of my ears from screaming in shock after seeing my bank statement.  I’ve been known to occasionally cover expenses that my friends can’t cover or to just outright treat them to lunch or something.  I’ve never had to question or doubt my own generosity.  Except once.

(insert ripples of nostalgia here)

Way back in Elementary School, I had a friend named Q-Bert.  If you’ve ever seen any of those teen movies, you might spot that clichéd pasty geeky loner kid in the back.  That’s exactly what Q-Bert was.  He really did have a very pasty flaky skin for some reason.  I guess he just had really dry skin or something.  Somehow I managed to befriend him for some reason.  Maybe it was because he and I were somewhat of an outcast of our class.  For whatever reason, we hung out with each other a lot.  Usually we’d go to his house and play Double Dragon on his PC.  Besides that, we’d also clean his room even though it was always spotless.  I don’t know why, but I remembered that I had a lot of fun with him.  He was by no mean a fun guy, but we managed to find a little amusement with the time we spent together. I thought we were good friends, but my mom noticed the flaw in our friendship.

Apparently, according to my mother, Q-Bert takes advantage of our friendship.  I would give and give while he takes and takes.  Being so young then, I didn’t see it that way until she brought it up.  I thought about the times when I did him favors, but I couldn’t really recall anytime when he did any favors for me.  This being so long ago, I can’t remember any real specific examples.  I do however remember the last one.

This happened during the last days of my elementary school days.  Q-Bert owed me some money.  I can’t remember why or how much.  I just remember that it wasn’t much.  We were walking towards his house when I reminded him that he owed me money.  He seemed upset over it.  God knows why, but the conversation kinda went sour from there.  When we finally reached his house, he told me to stay outside while he gets the money.  So I waited.  Not long after, he stuck out his head out of the window from the second floor and threw the money out the window all in coins.  Then I got mad and walked away.  Who did he think I was, a bum who’s desperate enough for cash to pick them up off the sidewalk.  After that, I avoided him.  I didn’t want to become friends with someone who doesn’t have any respect for me.  That was the last time I saw him.