Barnabas Monkeypants

After nearly cutting my son’s leg in two, we (Kristen, me, you readers) all came to the conclusion that I’m the worst father in America. That much we can agree upon. I’m here to tell you that I’m also one of the worst friends in America.

I must admit that I’ve been using this site as my communication with most of you, that I no longer call or e-mail and instead just hope that you read this and know that, yes, I’m still alive, and, yes, I haven’t ruined Henry’s life. (Yet.)

But really, my bad friendship-ness isn’t anything new. Until I came to Chicago, I had moved around quite a bit (from Pittsburgh to various places in New Jersey and eventually back to the Pennsylvania city where I grew up) and job hopped even more. And in those various places, I met a lot of really nice people, many of whom I vowed to stay in touch with after moving away/moving jobs.

Of course, I haven’t. I’m a terrible, terrible person.

Now I don’t think I’m alone in this. People tend to move around — both residence and employment — a lot more than they used to. How many people younger than 40 do you know who have been at their same company for 10 years? How about 5? Not that many. (I think it has to do with impatience, frankly. Nobody, and I’m a good example of that, want to wait to be promoted internally when they can more easily do it by hopping from job to job, company to company.)

I think the biggest problem I have with keeping up with people is that the longer I don’t call them or e-mail, the harder it is to do so. I haven’t spoken with my friend Mindie in 6 years. If I call her now (and if I can even figure out what her phone number is), what would I say exactly? “Hey. What’s up? What have you been doing the past 2,000 days?” My friend Nick, who I met when I was in the sixth grade, I haven’t spoken to in nearly 2 years. What about Lynn, who actually tracked me down and sent me a Christmas card this year (which I somehow misplaced and cannot find for the life of me). Should I call her after 5 years of silence?

And even worse, if I start calling people now, it will seem like I’m only getting in touch so that I can tell them about how wonderful my chubby-cheeked baby is. (Full disclosure: oh, yes, I would talk about him quite a bit. Did you know that last night he slept in two 5-hour stretches? And that at his one-month check-up, also yesterday, he weighs in at a whopping 10 lbs? What a baby! What a chubby baby!)

So, here’s the thing. If you want me to call you, and you’re not afraid that all I’ll talk about for the first 90 minutes is Henry, leave a comment or e-mail me. If you’d rather just read this and remember me as I was when we spoke — likely 20 pounds lighter and more hair on top (and less on the back) — that’s fine too. Heck, I’ll probably just lose your Christmas card anyway.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Worry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.