As a boy I thought one accumulated friends but never lost any, like putting pennies in a piggybank. I think it was in college when I realized pals from my high school days had disappeared. Friendships were sealed in blood and I was now struggling to recall their names. The piggy-bank simile was replaced in time by an attic with limited space: if you put something new into storage, something has to go On goes through life turning over acquaintances.

I was looking into my iPhone the other day when I happened to find an old ‘favorites’ list of blogs I read years ago (circa. 2015), many whose titles I recognized right away. There were many I did not recall. I opened each one. Nearly all of them were ‘closed’ or ‘not available”. A few were still up on line but haven’t been written in over ten years. There were a few – a tiny few – ‘still alive and kicking’. I don’t know which made me the more sad: the blogger buddies I could not remember or the blogger-buddies I remembered but have disappeared. I figured there was no harm reaching out via email (if possible) but I pressed the wrong button and they all disappeared – gone as if they had never existed.

I started blogging in 2006; I’ve seen a lot of blogs come and go. The ones on my current roster** are a slim percentage of all I have ever read. Blogging resembles evolution: the vast majority of all species through time are now extinct. And there is I, like a horseshoe crab, plugging away.*

Before I managed to wipe out the cache of old defunct blog addresses, I recognized a few whose writers still keep in touch as it were via The Book of Faces. A few of them were FB pals for a while, but they have dropped out from that as well. Once upon a time these folks were important to me; now I struggle to remember who they were. I am working up the nerve to ask a few on Facebook to remind me how do we know each other? Did you have a blog once upon a time?

Over time I’ve learned no to fret so about these matters. The ones who stay in my life stay for a reason, and while it is sad to think of the ones whose whereabouts are unknown, they were good companions while it lasted.

Whenever I write a post like this one, it inspires me to track down a few ‘out of touchers” and send them a note to say I am thinking of them.

*Horseshoe crabs are estimated to be 450 million years old and are the same as they have always have been. Species come; species go. The horseshoe crab stays.

**Everyone one of them, a marvelous party.