Oh em gee, how millennial even are you?

Take the quiz!

Read the rest of the Pew Center’s report, Millennials: Confident, Connected, Open to Change.

Delete the Number Already

These new-fangled cell phones, without which us Millennial Ladies could not live, fill our lives with problems heretofore unknown.  There’s the texting (and sexting), there’s the inescapable caller ID.  And then there is the everlasting contacts list. 

Unless you lose your phone (and start one of those ubiquitous – and dangerous – lost-my-phone! Facebook groups), your phonebook is Forever.  Thanks to SIM cards, when you change phones, your phonebook goes right along with you.  Thanks to number-porting, most of us still have the same number we’ve had since we got our first phones.  There is no forgetting or losing a number.  And it takes up no space.  Therein are born the “should I delete his number?” Facebook statuses.  And the answer, I learned the hard way, is YES.

At some point this morning, either one of the times that I dropped my phone, or when I stuck it in my purse without locking the keypad, my phone accidentally dialled an “ex.”  Like, the love-of-my-life one-who-got-away “ex.”  I only realized this several hours later when I went into my call log to make a call.  According to the log, the call lasted for one second – could be one second of ringing, or one second of his going “hello?”

I kind of stressed about it (ie, had a panic attack), and then blocked it out of my mind.

UNTIL HE CALLED BACK this evening.  I was so in shock that I didn’t answer, and he left a hang-up message.  On the advice of a friend that I couldn’t just ignore it, I sent a text back: “whoopsy-daisy I dropped my phone and called you by accident, have a nice life.”  And I got a text back: “who r u.”  Definitely not the best-case scenario.  It’s possible that he’s changed numbers.  Or, since he had a horrifically bad memory, my number’s still in the phone but he’s forgotten my name/who I am.

Anyway, no need to answer, because either it isn’t his number anymore, or, when I bump into him by accident in the city, he won’t associate me with the random call and text he got months before.

But the lesson is clear: Delete The Number.  I have so many of these old guys’ numbers in my phone – from high school, even.  I’ve been watching Hoarders, and have learned that only crazies who are getting evicted live their lives by “Just In Case.”  Just in case what, I need to call him?  Obviously not.  Just in case he’s calling me and I can recognize the caller ID?  Yes, maybe, that would be nice.  But it’s almost as nice to be able to sound genuinely perplexed when I answer the phone, or to text back a “who is this” of my own.  And even nicer: not accidentally, mortifyingly, calling him.

There is no reason to keep the number of a guy that you’re not going to call.  There is no “just in case” worth accidentally calling him (“accidentally” also includes drunk-dialling). 

Delete The Number.