i was thinking today about my friends and was amazed that i have any at all.  not for the normal emo, insecure reasons that most people are amazed to find that they have any friends at all (e.g. that they smell funny, have no personality, that they stare at your breasts/crotch/mole/whatever), but because i have a fairly idiosyncratic negligence of most of my friends.  it all comes down to my recently discovered phonophobia.

i don’t like to talk to my local friends over the phone – it’s easier to send them an email or message them on their phones so that they can consume my correspondence at their convenience.  i hardly call my parents more than three times a month. my last girlfriend dumped my ass over the phone. hell, the very last phone call that i had was bad news, so why would i think of the phone as a bearer of good tidings?  i’m not sure if this is something clinical or just a temporary thing, but i found recently that i hate talking on the phone.  i love to see people face to face and i don’t usually have trouble dealing with people in a general sense.  i’ve isolated several things about talking on the phone that just rub me the wrong way.
the first reason is that i lack visual cues as to when the other person is done talking, and i typically try and talk before the other person is done, or leave long pauses waiting for the other person to continue which make me sound stupid.  if talking on the phone was a skill like a dungeons and dragons character class, i’d be like a zeroth level  phonographer.  telephone solicitors – they’d be like 20th level.  i’m so far beneath an average skill level in carrying on a phone conversation, it astounds me.  seriously.

then there’s the second reason which is that good news is rarely communicated over the phone.  say you’re calling someone you love – well, you’re usually expressing the despair of not being with them right then and there – that’s sort of negative.  if you’re talking to someone that you don’t like – then that’s intrinsically negative.  if you’re talking to someone near-by, then why don’t you just go over there and talk to them in person, and are you keeping them from doing something that they rather should be doing?  negative.

my final reason is that i have an overdeveloped sense of not wanting to inconvenience or hinder anyone – which extends to keeping them on the phone.  i tend to believe that most of my friends have 24 -96 better things that they could be doing at the exact moment that i am calling them, and so i am probably keeping them from doing those things at the exact moment that i am calling them.

that’s why i prefer things like email or blogs or even – sigh – facebook to communicate to my friends what i’m doing. 

so what is the profile of my average great friend?  someone who recognizes that i hate the phone, can go for long periods of time without “hearing” from me, and who, when i see them next face-to-face, will recognize that i love them just as much or more than the last time i saw them face-to-face.

i recognize that this is abnormal.  i am working on fixing it.  i’m willing at this point to declare 2008 george’s year of the phone, where i make better use of my unlimited long distance plan and cellular plan, and bother the hell out of all of my friends.  but until then, just hold on.  i know that you’re out there and i’ll try and get over this.  or get a blackberry or something that we can message on.

- g

song of the day for admiring the friends who still try and keep in touch with you: it’s not unusual, tom jones