I have a friend whom I have never actually
met. Her name is Kramer, and yesterday she posted a video about a woman who was
disappointed that nobody called her on her birthday.
She received plenty of text messages, but
not a single phone call.
The point of Kramer's video was simple.
Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten the difference between sending
somebody a message and actually talking to them on the telephone or as Kramer
put it, the banana.
Not everything deserves a text. Some things
deserve a phone call. A birthday is one of them.
Just before I watched Kramer's video, my
phone rang.
It was Mo.
I met Mo on Bumble about six months after my
separation. I was wandering through the emotional wreckage of a broken
marriage, trying to figure out what the hell I am going to do with the rest of
my life. Bumble seemed as good a place as any to start looking for answers.
That was nine years ago.
Mo and I never became a couple, but we
became something that has turned out to be way better, we became friends.
Through the divorce, the uncertainty, the
disappointments, and all those days when life seemed determined to kick me
squarely in the nuts, Mo was there.
She has been one of my biggest
supporters. Bigger, in some ways, than people I had known for decades.
There is something worth thinking about
in that.
We spend our lives collecting friendships,
believing that the longer we have known somebody, the stronger the bond must be,
but life does not work that way. Sometimes somebody walks into your life
through a door you never expected to open and ends up occupying a place you
never imagined they would.
Sometimes the people who show up for you
aren't the people you expected, and sometimes the people you expected don't
show up at all.
Yesterday, on a beautiful autumn
afternoon, Mo picked up the phone and called me.
No special occasion, no emergency, no
elaborate reason.
She just wanted to talk, and it meant a
hell of a lot.
I suppose that is what Kramer was getting
at. A text tells somebody you are thinking about them. A phone call gives them
a little piece of your day. Your voice, your laughter, your undivided
attention. Things that can't get squeezed between a pile of crap emoji and an
LOL.
There is a difference
between being remembered and being made to feel important.
Today's quote reads…
"They did not know it was impossible,
so they did it."
It is
a line commonly attributed to Mark Twain, although nobody seems entirely
certain he actually said it.
At the bottom of today's Chalkboard, I
wrote the word INCONCEIVABLE!
Any member of Gen X should immediately hear
Wallace Shawn's voice from The Princess Bride. Vizzini spends half the
movie declaring things inconceivable, only to discover that the world has very
little interest in what he considers possible.
Nine years ago, the idea that a woman I met
on a dating app would become one of the most dependable friends of my adult
life would have seemed inconceivable.
Yet here we are.
Maybe that is the beauty of life. We don't
always know what is possible because we haven't lived long enough to see it
happen.
Friendship isn't measured by how many
years somebody has known you, but by how often they remind you that you fucking
matter.
My imperfect sun has a shit-eating grin
this morning. It is supposed to reach 69 degrees today, but I chalked 68
instead. The number 69 either makes people uncomfortable or gets them horny,
and it is far too early in the morning to be dealing with either group.
Besides, 68 is a perfectly respectable
number.
Somewhere between an unexpected phone call,
an old friendship that began in an unlikely place, and a sunny October
afternoon, I was reminded of something.
The inconceivable isn't always something
extraordinary that changes the world. Sometimes it's something ordinary that
changes your day.
Pick up the phone.
You never know how much it might mean to
the person on the other end.
Okay you Chalkheads… it is Tuesday and I’m
already in, in a daydream.
