I'm Like a Bird

Getting lots of "wrong number" calls lately. Call me paranoid, but since I have a New Jersey area code, and the calls are all from the local area – not New Jersey – I’m going to have to go ahead and figure that either my number is on a bathroom wall somewhere or I’ve got a would-be stalker.

I’ve had a couple of stalkers in my time, and I guess I’m just lucky not to instill too much crazed passion in men because my stalkers all turned out to be harmless. The one time I mentioned to my mother that someone, who turned out to be a married neighbor, left a note on my car declaring his love for me, she got really nervous, so I don’t bring those things up to her anymore.

Got another wrong number on my home line, which does have a local area code, but this call was from Riverside, California. Now, my home number is always the one old friends call when they're trying to reconnect. It’s the one listed on Yahoo’s People Search. So, I scrolled through my mental Rolodex to try to remember who I know in Riverside. Surprisingly, I know several people in that area. Very surprisingly as I've never done more than driven through Riverside.

I immediately weed out Mr. Carrie’s grandfather because while he did have kind of a big crush on me, I don’t think he’d remember my full name. Yahoo does have its limitations, and I'm almost certain that typing in “Carrie’s friend Paige” would come up with zero hits. While I’m at it, I go ahead and eliminate Mr. Carrie’s entire family, because I can’t imagine anyone would want to reconnect or would need closure after the suicide attempt. And I still maintain I had nothing to do with that. Which leaves just a couple of people, one of whom is an old boyfriend I haven’t talked to in about five years and who has a birthday coming up.

That seems about right.

This is why I don’t do Facebook or mySpace. Why bother? They find you anyway. Besides, I kind of like it when they go through the trouble of tracking you down in some search engine to get your number. You can’t make it too easy. Gotta weed out the riff-raff…


All joking aside and for the record, I am always open to reconnect with old friends I’ve lost touch with. I’m just one of those people you can call after a couple of years, and it’s like no time has passed between us. I don’t hold on too tight to those who are close to me, because, frankly, I don’t want to be held too tight, either.

We’ve all heard that “if you love something set it free…” saying. Well, when I was eight I actually got a t-shirt from one of those kiosks at the mall hot ironed with that saying and the picture of a dove on it, and I wore it to death. I live that saying. Everyone I care about is free to fly away and come back again.

And because from time-to-time they let me fly away, too, I think I actually love them more.