I have several hundred people on my buddy list. It’s a collection I’ve been working on for the past ten or so years. Now, you may think that to only have a couple hundred over ten years isn’t all that impressive, but these are the people I trusted enough to give my contact information to. So in a way, it’s rather surprising it’s that large.
I don’t talk to all of them these days. There is probably a dozen I talk to frequently, another dozen I talk to on occasion. The rest of the hundreds usually never sign on. Some of them moved to different screen names,. Some move on in their lives and just never get on. Others, unfortunately, have passed away from this world, yet I keep their screen names as a way to help remember them.
Something about deleting a screen name seems odd, like it’s wrong to do. Does deleting a screen name signify that you no longer want to be friends, even if you haven’t talked to them in five years? What if they contact me one day, just to say hey? I’d feel bad that I removed them so long ago. I often wonder what would really make me delete someone’s screen name, and the only real reason is if I wanted to forget their existence, if I don’t want to be reminded of their story. I’ve deleted a few in my time, but I couldn’t say what they were, so if forgetting is my intention, then I suppose it worked.
My buddy list spans my life online for the past ten or so years. Almost everyone on that list has a story, a memory. One kid somewhere in the north western part of the U.S., shares the same birthday as me, just two years after. Another somewhere in Canada is a crazy fan of The White Stripes. He also makes me giggle cause he’s Canadian. There’s a friend who I met in Seattle, and also a friend who moved to Seattle. A friend who makes amazing music, another who draws great works of art in Photoshop. A handful I played games with, another handful I talked about music with, and some more I just talked about anything with.
Everyone on my list has a story, a story I wish not to forget. If your screen name is on my list, there is a reason. If you were on my list once, but no longer, there is also a reason, and I’d rather not remember. It’s my buddy list, and it’s the way I like it.