K.I.T. Have a Good Summer!

That's "Keep In Touch, Have a Good Summer" if no one's ever signed your junior high yearbook before. Maybe you already knew that, but think about what "Keep in Touch" means. Many people use it as a throwaway line when they know they won't see someone in a while, much like the way we use "Have a Safe Flight" before someone takes a trip.

Regardless of what "Keep in Touch" means to you, there is no doubt that the methods of keeping in touch with a friend have increased dramatically in the last 10 years due to the internet and social networking and cell phones and all that fancy stuff that Al Gore invented. Because of this, I argue that the amount of legitimate excuses for not keeping in touch has run on an asymptotic path during the last decade (non math majors: it's pretty much close to zero now).

I spent some time today with my good friend Kim, and I am sometimes amazed that we have kept in touch as well as we do. After being decent enough friends in high school, Kim and I have seen each other only 5 times in the last 7 years (she lived in Washington and Turkey and I lived in California and Texas), yet we make sure to make semi-regular phone calls to each other, calls that have become as frequent as bi-weekly as our cell phone plans have become a little better. (Here's a photo album from Kim's visit to Davis in 2003.)

The reason Kim was in the area is because she is heading back to Turkey again this week to be closer to her boyfriend, who is in the midst of a PhD program there. Kim and I were talking today in the car about how we can still maintain regular contact without using expensive international cell phone services. Well, even though she is living in the wood age (she has 4 MySpace friends), we came up with a bunch of alternatives, including Skype, instant messaging, e-mail (which we used when she was in Turkey the first time), and messaging on Facebook. I'm trying to get Kim to change to G-mail so we can catch each other on G-chat while checking e-mail once in a while. Pretty simple, right?

Back to "Keep in Touch". I'm looking at my junior high yearbook and literally 75% of girls wrote either "K.I.T." or "Andrew you are weird." I am completely not joking about this. And speaking of junior high, there were pretty much only three widespread, convenient ways to keep in touch in the mid-90s. You could a) call someone on their house phone, b) send them a postal letter or note, or c) talk face-to-face. Remember the days when you would call your friend at their house and say: "Hi is Indupreet home?" and Indupreet's mom would respond: "Sorry, Indupreet is at SAT class, do you have a message for him?"

But of course, Indupreet wouldn't always call me back right after SAT class because sometimes his mom didn't even relay the message. Really, if you wanted to contact Indupreet, or let's say Sandeep or Chittij (I had a lot of Indian friends growing up), the most efficient way was sometimes PHYSICALLY GOING TO THEIR HOME AND TALKING TO THEM. It's a novel idea, I know; once in a while I even got invited inside for some palak paneer and a game of Contra.

And I'm telling you this because: we live in 2007 and there is no excuse for not keeping in touch with people who you want to keep in touch with. There are so many strong options for doing so that you would have to be actively negligent of a relationship to not keep in contact with someone.

And I will say this flat out: if someone does not keep in contact with you, it means they do not want to keep in contact. Period. Dot. Small round subscript punctuation mark. It's too damn easy to communicate now for someone to claim that they have been too busy to reach you. We have cell phones, e-mail, and social networking, and despite how fashionable it is to complain about your cell phone provider, they are all very reliable methods of communication. Most of the time, "I have been too busy" either means "I wasn't that interested in contacting you right now" or "I forgot." I forget a lot, and I'll tell you when I do. But I hope that I have never been too busy to call a good friend back or send a quick e-mail. You know e-mails are free, right?

So today I salute people like Kim who still keep in touch because she obviously thinks that I am a person worth keeping in touch with, and that's worth at least a salute in this widely-read blog that has a readership of 11 people in over 2 countries. So keep in touch and have a good summer, hope we don't get Mr. Lattuada for math next year, peace sign, happy face, home phone number, Andrew.