255) Weak Ties

The strangest thing happened on Christmas eve. My family and I were at Yoshi's in San Francisco to hear a jazz singer perform a Christmas set. In the middle of "What a Wonderful World," I suddenly remembered someone I used to know in college that I'd forgotten about until that moment. From what I recall, he was a year older than me, and shared what must have been a Communication class. He was Asian, tall and lanky, and wore zip up hoodies a lot. I remember what I believe to be his name, which I quickly jotted down on my hand before the song ended.

But for the life of me I can't remember how we met or why we aren't still friends. There are the friends that you lose touch with, and then there are the weak acquaintance ties that just...disappear from your life. The weird part is when you don't even remember that they were a part of your life, until something random triggers their face in your brain (reminds me of Zoolander and the song trigger). It's like they say - not knowing is one thing, but not knowing that you don't know is even worse.

Facebook is rife with weak ties. Out of your hundreds of friends, there's a good chance that you haven't seen or talked to the majority of them in years. But you don't have to - that's the beauty of it. The weak ties are simply preserved by Facebook - people are bookmarked for potential future reference. (For the record, this forgotten acquaintance and I were never Facebook friends. And a search for his supposed name brings up nothing. The search continues.)