Phone-A-Friend

I was thinking about an old friend today and how long it's been since I've talked to her.

I'm such a rotten friend.

This particular friend isn't into Facebook. She will probably never see this blog. She has a computer (I think), she's just not big into using it. Frankly, it's become a huge part of my social life.

She's called me many times over the last few years. I rarely call her. She texts, and whenever she's in town (she lives about 30 minutes away), she usually tries to stop by and visit. I don't think I've been to her house since the fall.

So I texted her today. We didn't talk about much, but I felt better just for saying hello. A woefully inadequate hello, but hello still.

I complained to another friend about how lousy I am at using the phone to call friends like her. "Why is it so hard to just pick up the darned phone?" I wailed. (Okay...I wailed in my head. We were talking via instant message, so she didn't hear that. Did you know newsrooms..or at least mine...are now are tombs compared to what they used to be? That's what I hear...er...read, anyway. Nobody talks to each other anymore: they email and IM.)

"I don't call anyone either," came her reply.

I've complained about this in the past to various other friends about this shortcoming of mine. Their replies are always the same: "I don't call anyone, either." Names flash through my mind...people I dearly love, and haven't talked to in months. I still love them! I do! I just don't call them. I like their Facebook statuses instead.

I have a gazillion reasons I don't call: I'm busy. When I get home at night and everything is quiet, I want it to stay quiet. It's rare. I do try to keep my cell phone bill down by keeping the minimum minutes, but unlimited text. That way I can keep in touch without talking on the phone. And I have a house phone, but it's been taken over by a 13-year-old who clearly doesn't share my problem.

It's so much easier to send a text, and then I can keep on doing whatever it is I'm doing. This is another  excuse I have. Although once upon a time, I could scrub the house top to bottom while I talked on the phone. In fact, I cleaned best while I was on the phone. Now I've doled out a lot of the cleaning duties to my kids. And the cleaning I still do is to the radio...with both hands free and no crinked necks.

What happened?