Tag Archives: out of touch

My best friend Craig

I want to take a minute and give a big shout out to my best friend. Craig, you’re the greatest. I’ve never felt closer to anybody else in my life. And even though you took that job in Cincinnati a year and a half ago and, yeah, we haven’t really seen as much of each other as we used to, I just want to let you know that, Craig, I hold our friendship in a very special place in my heart. And I guard that special place. It’s protected. Because you’re a special guy. Craig, you’re my best friend.

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Even though you got married last month, even though I wasn’t invited to the wedding, that’s cool Craig, and yes, I completely understand. Not every wedding is a big deal, sometimes it’s nice to have a more intimate ceremony, I get it. And the bachelor party that you had in Vegas a few weeks before? It’s cool man, you were probably just looking out for me, you know how much I hate flying, right, and gambling. It’s not that I hate it, I just suck at it, and so you actually did me a huge favor, saved me from losing my rent money at the blackjack table. So thanks dude, you’re a good friend. You’re the best.

And no, I wasn’t stalking you on Facebook, so I’m sorry if this is all coming off as a little intrusive. But I was talking to Phil a while back and he mentioned something like, “I bet you can’t wait for Vegas, right?” and I was like, “Vegas?” and he was like, “Oh, you know what? I don’t know what I mean … I meant … I mean … weren’t you going to Vegas? Maybe that was someone else. Maybe that was … uh … I forgot what I was going to say.”

And I let it go, I mean, I could tell that something was up, but I didn’t want to get in his face. And even though I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling, like it was so obvious that Phil thought I had been included in something that I clearly wasn’t a part of. So when everyone was out to lunch I started snooping around the office and, you remember Carl, right? I think you guys worked together for a little while after college, and then I started working with Carl, I forgot how it even came up, but yeah, we were talking one time about our mutual acquaintance.

Yeah, that’s how it came up, it’s just coming back to me now. I had been working here for a few months and one day everyone was out for drinks after work. And I’ve never really understood what the protocol is, like what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate for friend requesting your coworkers. Like, I see you guys every day, obviously I think we should be friends on Facebook. But does it come across as too strong if one day I’m just going down the list requesting coworker after coworker?

So I was out after work that one day and Carl was on his phone, I saw him scrolling through his News Feed and I said, “Hey man, you’re on Facebook?” like it was a question, even though it was a stupid question, of course he’s on Facebook, of course I’m looking at his cell phone screen over his shoulder, I should’ve just kept pretending to mind my own business. But I whipped out my cell phone and I was like, “Friend request sent!” totally over the top, but in a self-aware way. Maybe it was too self-aware. Maybe that’s why I never saw Carl out for drinks after that.

Anyway, yes, now that I’m saying this all out loud, it does seem a little crazy, me remembering the one mutual Facebook friend Carl and I had in common, you. Me, waiting for Carl to go on his lunch break, then going over to his computer and searching your name under his Facebook account, confirming what I already kind of knew to be true, that you did the Vegas bachelor party thing, that I wasn’t invited, that for some reason you changed your privacy settings to deny people like me from seeing what was going on while allowing people like Carl to see status updates and photos from the trip on his News Feed.

Craig, it’s cool, man, you’re my best friend. And yeah, sometimes you go through huge chunks of time without talking to your best friend. I mean, this is a big planet, and life has a way of pulling us in many different directions. So it’s not totally unreasonable for two best friends to go a couple of years without speaking or answering each other’s phone calls or returning any of each other’s text messages. Did you get a new phone number? Like a Cincinnati area code?

It’s cool dude, next time you’re in New York, give me a shout, OK, I’ll buy you a beer, we can catch up on old times. Did I tell you that Diane and I are expecting our second kid? Yeah man, it’s going to be a boy. I was thinking about naming him Craig, after you, after my best friend. Would you be the godfather? I mean, you only have to be as involved in little Craig’s life as you want to, but if you did want to, I mean, you could be like as into his life as possible. You could be like his second dad. Hey, if anything happens to Diane or me, would it be cool if I listed you as the guy that gets to raise the boys? No pressure, if you say no, that’s no, that’s cool. But just think about it. And if you and … what was her name, your new wife? I’m really anxious to meet her. But if you guys have kids and you want to do the same, Diane and I would be more than happy to … I’m getting carried away.

But I miss you man. I wish some of those jobs that I applied to in Cincinnati would at least give me a call back. It’s like, you don’t understand man, I’ve applied for everything. I went to Cincinnati craigslist and I sent my resume out to pretty much every listing available. Is there anything open by you? Just let me know.

Craig, I love you dude. I hope we get in touch soon. Man I hope you read this and you give me a call. Don’t worry if it’s like five years from now, you stumble across this and you think, shit, it’s probably too late now to reach out. It’s not too late. I don’t care if it’s like five, ten, thirty years from now, just give me a ring man, it’ll be like we never lost touch. Because it won’t be weird or awkward, it’ll just be two best friends, hanging out, catching up on old times, shooting the shit.

Seriously, Craig, dude, give me a call man. For real.

I’m not out of touch

Sometimes I worry that I’m growing out of touch. It’s not something that anybody does on purpose. It’s just like, you get to a certain point, you’re comfortable with who you are and the stuff you do, one day you’re ten years old and you’re listening to Pearl Jam, Vitalogy on your little boom box, everything’s cool, you’re cool, you’re music’s cool, then you’re in college, you’re still listening to Vitalogy, you’ve got all of these new cool friends, and they all love Vitalogy just as much as you do.

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And then you blink and you’re almost thirty years old and you’re still listening to Vitalogy and, yeah, I guess if you really wanted to call up your old college buddies, get them on the phone, ask them point blank, “Vitalogy is still cool, right?” they’d be like, “Hell yeah, that’s such a classic CD. That’ll never go out of style.” And you’d be like, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” But honestly, when was the last time you even saw any of those guys? Do they still have the same phone numbers? Would it be awkward cold calling all these years later just to talk about Pearl Jam?

It’s not even about Pearl Jam. It’s about being in touch, or out of touch. Like I started seeing all of these posters for the HBO show Girls, season three. I wanted to be like, ha, what a dumb show. But I’ve never even seen an episode. Not one. I know that some people make fun of it. Or, I think I read something on Gawker one time three years ago that was making fun of it. Or the tone was snarky. I don’t even remember.

And then I think, what am I going to do, start ripping on a show that I’ve never seen, just because, what, it looks like something that for some reason or another I’d assume wouldn’t be my cup of tea? What does that say about me, that I find advertisements for this wildly popular show somehow worthy of me thinking I’m better? That I’m better than the HBO show Girls?

That doesn’t make any sense. I must be out of touch, maybe just a little. It’s like I can remember being a little kid, and anything that came out that was too girlie, all of the boys made fun of it, constantly. Barbies? Ha. Stupid girls. Boys play with action figures. We make fun of Barbies. About how stupid they are. Stupid Barbie dolls.

I hope I’m not carrying around that much of my snot-nosed brat former child inside of me still, but I get a gut-wrenching reaction to a poster of a show that’s for some reason not marketed directly toward me, and this voice inside is like, how dare they? Don’t they know that I’m the prime demographic? This offends me. Somebody, when’s the new season of Walking Dead coming out? Anybody. Tell me about a new superhero movie in theaters soon.

But I don’t want to swing in the opposite direction either. I don’t want to get so scared that I’m losing touch that I’ll just start clinging automatically to whatever happens to be trending at the moment. I remember I read some article in the New York Times a year or two ago. The title of the article suggested that it was about young people, how they prefer random hookups over serious relationships.

And then I read the article and it wound up being nothing more than a recap of the most recent episode of Girls. Specifically, the author referred to the show as a “cultural weathervane.” I was thinking, man, this person’s a journalist, they see one episode of a new TV show, they have no idea what’s going on and so they think, wow, I’m out of touch. I’d better embrace this lest I fall even further out of touch. They grasp desperately to the weathervane, please, point me back in the direction of what’s cool, teach me about this alien world of the new.

I thought that instead of making fun of a popular TV show, I’d make fun of someone else talking about a popular TV show, and that would somehow make me feel less out of touch. Because I’m not out of touch, I still get new stuff. I just bought a new CD a month ago. It’s the new Pearl Jam. It’s OK. It’s not as good as Vitalogy, but it’s still pretty cool.