…or how a simple girl from suburban Las Vegas became a championship stalker
The other day, I was reading my Twitter feed on my iPhone and discovered that it was National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. Naturally, my first thought was of my friend Julianna, who is a cookie enthusiast (this is an understatement). (Side note: when I told her on my last day in New York that I had had the greatest cookie in the world that morning, she asked if it was from Levain Bakery. Obviously, it was.) I texted Jules to make sure that she knew it was National Chocolate Chip Cookie day. Not that she ever needs an excuse to eat a chocolate chip cookie, but I wanted to make sure she didn’t miss a prime opportunity to do so.
In the days of yore, I would have had to consult my Farmer’s Almanac to know that it was National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. Then I would have had to send Jules a message via the Pony Express or carrier pigeon, and by the time it got there, it wouldn’t have been National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day anymore.
I like to let people know when I’m thinking of them. Like, “Caitlyn! I read this fluff piece about the quality of this season’s maple syrup batch on Jezebel!” or “Amanda, I just washed a dish towel! Remember when we almost had to have a sumo wrestling match over the bag of dirty dish towels in our kitchen senior year?” or “Jon, I just saw a cookbook written by Sheryl Crow called ‘If It Makes You Healthy.’” At any given moment, I’m thousands of miles away from the people I love (this is because they all insist on living in places like Spokane and Morocco and Paris and New York and I can’t handle that much snow, air travel, or humanity in a certain number of square feet). Technology makes me feel closer to them. Mostly because I can harass them on as regular a basis as I did when I lived near them.
I like to stalk people. Let me rephrase that so it sounds less incriminating: I like to know what’s going on in people’s lives. I LOVE other people’s lives. I think it’s because I’m such a voracious reader: I consume the details of other people’s lives like other people consume breakfast cereal. (Actually, I consume the details over other people’s lives like I consume breakfast cereal. Nobody eats as much cereal as me.) I keep up on EVERYONE’S lives on Facebook: people I talk to every week, people I haven’t talked to in years, people I like, people I hate. I like it even better when people have blogs because then I can pretend I’m reading a book, only it’s about characters that are real, which is even better than books because seriously, I’m still a little bitter that I can never hang out with Ron Weasley or the BFG.
I feel more comfortable keeping in touch with people when I’ve been in superficial touch with them via Facebook. The gap seems less insurmountable somehow.
Don’t get me wrong, though. There’s a reason I work carrier pigeons into conversation as often as possible… and once I’ve come up with a snappy business name involving carrier pigeons, you’ll know why.
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