Make the Phone Call

Laughter is far better than longing. Regret is far harder than a ring tone.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Last week I wrote about the August Scaries, confessing that in taking stock of summer, I feel like I haven’t done much by way of big exciting things. But there is one thing that I didn’t tell you about—I connected with a few old friends and former colleagues.

You know, the kinds of people who you mostly engage with online, and you like their stuff on Instagram, comment on Facebook about how big their kids, even occasionally DM or text to say, “we should get together one day!”

But you don’t.

Because that’s how we live these days, sometimes by keeping even those people we really care about relegated to some maybe one day social calendar in our heads.

And if you have anxiety, that can be a pretty packed calendar as we keeping punting those tentative plans farther and farther into the future.

This summer, I committed to making good on my best of intentions, and turned a bunch of those maybes into an assortment of long silly phone calls, a few earnest FaceTimes, and best of all, a handful of face-to-face dinners, drinks, coffees with people I’ve been missing.

Some friends were visiting from out-of-town, but some don’t live more than a few subway stops away from me; and I still let life (and habit) get in the way of reconnecting with them.

Two years, five years, ten years…it’s all a stupid long time not to see someone who makes you happy, makes you laugh, lets you vent, lets you cry, lets you be unmistakably, unapologetically yourself when you’re together.

Those people are rare and special, but we don’t always treat them that way.

One of those friends I reconnected with after far too long was an early advertising partner who meant a lot to me. Here’s the thing: We have been living in the same neighborhood for years, and now just a block apart. One block! We ran into each other often, as you can imagine, and chatted until the clock (or a kid) pulled us apart, always walking away from each other swearing we’d get together soon.

This time, a monstrous catch-up phone call one afternoon led to a chance run-in (I was coming from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, he was on his way there), which turned into a text follow-up, which turned into lunch plans…that we actually kept.

It was one of those luxuriously long meals where you’re so present, you don’t bother checking in with the office or taking a call or even holding up the phone for a commemorative selfie.

We reminisced about hilarious work experiences, correcting each other’s memories and filling in some blanks. (“Remember that time Michael Richards proposed to you on the set in the middle of that shoot…while he was in drag?” “And somehow the Taco Bell Chihuahua was on set, right? I didn’t dream that?”) We played “whatever happened to ______” as old friends do. We gushed about our kids and he assured me of the special joy in parenting adult children. We shared the stories of meeting our partners and all they had brought to our lives, genuinely delighted that we had each managed to emerge from messiness to find love again.

I don’t have the words to explain just how grateful I am that we actually made lunch happen this year and we had that time together. He died this week. He was only 58. And it’s a shitty, awful, fucked-up thing.

There’s no big moral of the story here that you don’t already know. But I’ll say it anyway, if only to remind myself:

Make the phone call.

Keep the plans.

Get over your shit.

Find the time.

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