Take That !!!!

This evening I had absolutely nothing to do, which is really kind of pathetic, considering it was Friday night.  That being said, I was on-call, which prevented me from drinking or leaving a rather large area, but restrictioning nonetheless.  These are times when one finds things to do; like re-organizing your wallet, sorting your sock drawer and emptying your email inbox.  I chose to engage in another, I thought meaningless, task.  I went through the contact list of my cell phone and deleted contacts that were old and outdated.

I was surprised at the number of these that were in my phone.  There were some 350-plus total contacts, and I was surprised at how many of them were worthy of deletion.  Some for the usual reason that they were just old, others because they were temporary in nature, while others were people I just had no idea who they were anymore.  Then, there were those that were very special.  The numbers of women I had broken up with in the past.  Now this is not an incredibly long list, which I suppose makes it an exclusive list, but it is a very meaningful list I came to find.

I scrolled through the contact list and every time I came to one of these special entries, I pondered it carefully.  I thought, do I really want to delete this person?  I considered the impact.  If they ever called, they would no longer come up in my phone as a name on the screen, they would come as numbers that I might not recognize.  Thus, I might actually answer the phone, and I had no desire, nor reason, to speak with them, but I could not resist.  In a couple of cases, I called the number, only to find that they had been disconnected.  In one case I got an answer and quickly hung up, having no idea who answered the phone.   I shall plead abject cowardice for this lack of backbone.  In a couple of cases I sent a text, and have no idea as to whether it was received or if the number was disconnected, as I got no reply.  In the end, I hit the menu button, scrolled down to "delete" and hot the select key.  Poof, the entry was erased.

There is something therapeutic about erasing a person from the contact list.  It is an act of finality.  It is the ultimate end, short of killing someone.  They no longer have the value of the minuscule data bits required to store the entry in the memory of my phone.  It is a kind of existential act of destruction that, for whatever reason, is supremely satisfying.  Regardless of whatever fault I may hold in the break-ups, it is still satisfying to be done with it in a manner of speaking.  Interesting how the act of pushing a button and eliminating a name from a list can have such an impact.

I presume life will go on uninterrupted for those deleted and, unless they got the text and just failed to respond, will never know they have existentially rubbed out, erased, deleted and otherwise eliminated.  The feeling of finality is for me and, like I said, is supremely satisfying.  Life can now move on.