What sort of ‘Phone Friend’ are you?

I don’t know about you, but I always seem to spend my ‘driving home from work time’ engaged in a team motivational meeting, attended only by myself, in only my brain, for only me to hear. Mostly my team meeting is a critique of my day, or a re-shuffle of  my To-do list, but as with any good meeting (even imaginary ones) there are some days I get a little bit distracted. Like today when I was trying to remember what I needed from the shops, until I noticed that a tree that I drive past regularly, actually has a naturally formed face on it that looks like ‘Alfred’ from the popular 80’s game Guess Who. I couldn’t believe it, I was so impressed. There are days that I arrive at my destination and cannot even remember how I got there let alone the fabulous ‘How I can earn money without even moving’ schemes I had thought of on the way.

Today while sitting at the traffic lights trying to avoid eye contact with the driver next to me as if we were in some sort of reverse ‘stare off’ I realised it had been nearly 5 months since I had last called a particular friend of mine. I was absolutely horrified. How could I have some much time pass by without just giving her a call? It was terrible. I immediately text her and arranged a good time for us to chat. As any mum would know, trying to call a friend with children is almost harder than trying to do a Rubic’s Cube without taking the stickers off and moving them. When your children are asleep, hers are awake, when you can talk she’s washing the floor or asleep, when you’re asleep, she can speak and so the cycle continues until you accidentally find a ‘good time’ to chat. But let’s back up a bit.

Why is it such an effort to speak to some people on the phone that it is easier not to call for months and risk missing some really life changing event in their lives? I have been giving this a bit of thought and have come up with the conclusion that all humans with a phone fall into a Phone Friend Category. Your phone category might be placing you unknowingly at the bottom of the phone a friend list.

So here they are:

Category A: This is the friend that you can call or text every day or two, with almost nothing of any importance to report. Usually a close friend who doesn’t mind your boring observations of who you just saw wearing no makeup at the shops, sports scores, or mundane convo’s about television shows. You can always just ring this person and have no shame in tell them that you’re getting off the phone now because you’re bored

Category B: This is the friend who you actually just call every month or so for a quick catch up and a laugh. They don’t care that you haven’t called, and nor do you. A low maintenance phone friend. You have also known this person for such a long time that you both know the score, but also both know you are there for the ‘big times’ in life, when the convo’s actually count. Convo usually is never too long to deter you from calling.

Category B.1 Same as Phone friend B but this friend actually does get annoyed that you haven’t called and has been holding their own private stand off that only they know about, where they have been waiting to see how long it would take you to call them…because you have sooooo much time to care about these silly things. Ha!

Category B.2 Same as Phone friend B, but you can leave it longer than even a month. Sometimes even 3 or 4 months and they still really don’t care.

Category C: The friend who you actually only call because you feel you have to keep the friendship going. You probably have known each other for years yet have very little in common these days. You hate the thought of the call, but once you actually do it you finish up thinking ‘Why don’t I call her more often?

Category D: This is the person you love to have a big chat and gossip with, but you leave it a while between calls because you want to store up enough info for a big chinwag and a laugh. The only problem is that you keep avoiding the call as you know it will last for 5 hours and really, who has time for that this week? Or this year?

Category E: The person that you call when you are bored and lonely and waiting for something. You are either: in the car waiting for someone, at the Doctors or some other public place that prompts you to call someone rather than sit alone like a Nigel No- Friends. This is always a risky call though, because they may not answer immediately and by the time they call you back, your ‘real’ life has resumed and you no longer care too much about speaking to them.

Category D; The text only friend. You are not too fussed about speaking on the phone and arrange every meeting via text. You would rather save all of your information for the face to face meeting.

Category E: Similar to the text only friend ‘The Voice Mail Chasey friend’ is often so busy that you continue to miss each in real time but are happy to converse using short messages.

So it seems that your friends can become a general mix of a few different categories or even evolve into to different categories as life rolls on. My poor friend accidentally fell into category D and that is my excuse for not calling. My solution is to call more frequently or maybe some ‘in between’ call text messages.

I’m sure I have missed so many additional ‘Phone Friend Categories’ so feel free to add any you think of.

So what sort of Phone friend are you? Or do you think it depends on who is calling?

P.s – I know some of you have googled a picture of ‘Alfred’ from Guess Who. Was he the one you thought he was?

Things you should probably know…….

Unbelievably it seems that a large proportion of people I know (and some I don’t know) find themselves in very ‘silly’ and awkward situations on a daily basis. Situations that I feel could be prevented with a little prior warning from a friend I like to call ‘Captain Obvious’.

Every day I hear another story about someone doing or saying something utterly ridiculous, and I want to slap their forehead and say ‘Come on now…did you really think that was a good idea? When was that ever going to be a ‘good idea’? I’m not ashamed to say that many times this person has been me. The following suggestions may or may not be based on true people or events.

Getting drunk at the work Christmas party and deciding that it would be best for everyone if you took on the job of telling the ‘work pest’ that they were in fact a pest, is not going to appear ‘helpful’. Also offering up suggestions for self- improvement and ‘less annoying workplace behaviours’ will not be well received.

Just a guess but he probably doesn’t really love you or want to marry you if you have never actually met him in person, he wants you to transfer $2000 before 2pm or requests you post him your nannas left kidney to a ‘secret’ overseas location.

Buying your three children Sprite Spiders as a ‘treat’ from McDonalds at 9am is probably going to cause you a great deal of grief for the rest of the day.

Driving your car to Friday night drinks and saying ‘If I decide to stay, I’ll leave my car and pick it up in the morning’ is never a good idea. You won’t even be in a fit state to pick the car up in the next week, never mind the next day and then someone will have to drive you to find it while you hold a bucket with your head out the window declaring ‘I’m never drinking again’ and reassuring the driver that you were sure ‘I left it around here somewhere’.

You will never open the new ‘large’ box of Maltesers and just have ‘a few’. You will eat 99 of them and feel as sick as a dog, but will leave 3 solitude balls rolling around just to prove to yourself you haven’t actually eaten the whole box. You will then revisit the pantry just before bed, and say to yourself ‘I may as well have those three now, just to get rid of the box’.

You will never meet the ‘fake friend who you awkwardly bump into again at the shops’ for a coffee. You will pretend that you don’t already have their number as some sort of crappy way out of admitting you just haven’t called them. You will both know that it will not be happening, but will still both actually spend the next agonizing few minutes frantically putting in numbers that are already in your phone.

If you leave the house with no makeup, dirty track pant, no underwear or hairy legs or toes, you will be spotted by someone. You may not realise it at the time, but two weeks later someone will say ‘Hey I saw you at the shops last week, but you looked busy so I didn’t stop you’. This actually means ‘You looked like you had been involved in some type of terrible trauma, I didn’t know where to look.

Your car does not have magic windows. Just because you are driving does not suddenly make you invisible, everyone CAN and will see you when you pick your nose. You are not protected by a ‘nose picking amnesty shield’ have some shame.

Just a thought……………………………………………