I went on ONE DATE with him in 2008:

Making the Case for an Analog Address Book

This morning, my servant robot (Alexa) reminded me that it was someone’s birthday, let’s call him Andrew Smart.

“Wish Andrew Smart a happy birthday,” Alexa chided. 

I went out with one (1) date with Andrew Smart in 2008. We met at a dog park. He had sleepy eyes and a great job, and we had a nice time at the Corona Mexican restaurant off Augusta Rd. 

Is that place still open? I can’t imagine it closing. I digress—

This rude electronic interruption dragging me by the hair down Memory Lane against my will got me thinking:

I’m going back to the address book. 

I still have my mother’s Goldpfeil date and address book. She used a dainty gold pen with it and wrote perfectly, all the addresses and phone numbers of the people and establishments she was connected with. 

Each winter as she compiled the Christmas card list, she would go through and edit her pages.

Once when I flipped through it, I noticed that the last entry was for Zorba’s Lounge in Greenville, SC, an establishment at which my father loved to take drunk and slur about. In the moment it struck me as terribly sad, the fact that she had the bar in her contacts. That she had to call that often. 

Later on I found out it wasn’t sad in the way I thought, though it was sad indeed. I’ll write about that another time. 

Today we are talking analog.

The reason I want to go back to pen-and-paper contacts is this:

We never edit the digital ones. There’s no dearth of space in which to place our peoples’ info, so we keep the information of every person we ever interact with, forever. 

That cannot be good. Right? The digital clutter? The vague but sure energetic ties?

I don’t need to be reminded of my ex-husband’s ex-best friend’s anniversary date. I don’t know any of these people anymore, I don’t even know if they’re still married, and I’ll be real—I don’t fucking care. 

And as good for me as it would be to clear all the irrelevant names and numbers out of my digital contacts list, who has the time? The desire? To complete such an arduous, tedious, boring task. ughhhhhhh no—

But with the ANALOG, see, you are forced to go back and edit some. Conserve space. 

Realize and reckon with the fact that you no longer need the name of your college town’s dojo because you 1) moved away fifteen years ago and 2) only took that one intro class in the first place.  

Anyway. I don’t care about Andrew Smart or his birthday though I certainly don’t wish him any ill will. But maybe I delete all the contacts I’ve amassed over the many years of digital life and start over on paper. 

Just a thought. 

What are you thinking about these days?

Margaret