Oh whatever. I could hear the collective eye rolling all the way down here in south Texas.
A few of you emailed me and secretly confessed that you had also considered joining but *gasp* "what would people say?"
And I get that because myspace is so the quintessential teenager hot spot. It is riddled with all the same shit we used to hide from our parents when we were that age. The difference was that we had to actually converse with people living in the same zip code as us and we would have never so publicly displayed what we were doing wrong. (You know, back in the day when we had to walk to school in the snow, uphill and barefoot...)
But also, those of us who take blogging as seriously as you can really take blogging are appalled by the html abuse on myspace. There is a disgusting overuse of graphics and because of it, I am very hesitant to even open pages. I hate waiting thirty goddamn minutes because you needed to run video on the sloppiest conglomeration of beer ads and scrolling half naked chics I have ever seen.
I mean, come on! People of myspace, I IMPLORE you. Please, clean it up. It's your space. Make it pretty and shit.
Anyway, I am tirad-ing here ["tirad-ing" is officially the 27th word created here on LOC, for those of you keeping track].
The intention of this post was NOT to bitch about myspace but rather to toss them a few accolades.
Ya'll remember a few months ago when I went to Dallas for my grandmother's birthday party? During that trip I was reunited with my best friend from the fourth and fifth grade, someone I had kept in contact with when I moved to Hawaii and who I was so very bummed I had lost touch with when the house burned down. She and I found each other on myspace literally a month after I had joined. This was such a wonderful experience for me. To be able to hang out with someone I was so close to thirteen years ago. It was unbelievable.
I have since been inundated with people I knew from high school sending me little "oh my god, is that really you?" emails. This is usually followed by a few catch up emails or a phone call to save the fingers cramping up and then we realize we have even less in common now than we did in high school so we respectively part ways.
But I didn't abandon the myspace because it had already been so very good to me in helping me find Naki. So, instead, I just check my messages on there about once every couple of weeks to see if anyone has contacted me. A week ago, after having deleted all the junk mail or the "you're hott, wanna chat?" emails, there was an email from a girl that I knew in high school.
She and I were never friends for reasons I don't remember now, so many years later. But she had written me nonetheless. Her email said a very brief hello followed by a mention of someone I had been very good friend with when I was in high school. Someone whom I hadn't spoken to in about ten years. She said he had asked about me and she wanted to know if I would like his number.
Honestly, I started to reply that I didn't remember who that person was but then, as I was typing those very words the memory smacked me hard and I remembered EXACTLY who he was and ohmygod YES I want his phone number.
But even then, I had no idea how much my brain was holding back. I hadn't even begun to dust off the memories I had with him.
Last night, when I got my computer back online, one of the very first things I did was check my myspace messages. And there was his number.
And man did I hesitate.
I mean, what was I going to say to this guy I just barely remember?
Plus it was ten o'clock... what if it was too late to be calling?
But then I just said "fuck it" as I frequently do and picked up the phone.
He answered on the third ring obviously not having the faintest idea who I was.
Which was practically laughable a few hours later when we were immersed in conversations about things I had completely forgotten about.
It was a helluva memory jog.
I am trying to think of a name for him here because I am sure I will be writing about him again so we will need a name...
I hate to be cliché and name everyone after what they do but I think I am going to anyway. We will call him The Therapist. Partially because that is what he does and partially because I felt like I had several hours of straight up therapy
It was amazing to reconnect with someone who was actually important to me all those years ago. I mean I talk to or hear about people pretty regularly that are from my past and I file away the information but I don't really feel intrigued. Last night was such a rush to be able to rehash all of these things that had happened a lifetime ago. The Therapist wasn't just someone who I was friends with and someone who was important to me, he was also someone I confided in and he was able to bring up things that I had long forgotten about. It was like the ten years had been just a few days and we were picking up right where we had left off.
It was just a truly rad thing.
And to think that he and I missed out on the last ten years of this. Of being friends of having all of this history and the connection.
I feel like we were gypped.
Six hours.
That is how long we talked people. Six. Hours.
And I don't anticipate this being a one time thing by any means since he happens to live in Austin which is just two hours from me. There are plans in the making for me to make the drive up there for a weekend so that we can do that whole six hours of chatter thing in person :) With wine.
So, I have to say it. I have to give myspace some props.
I happen to owe not one, but two very important reunions to myspace.
