Thursday, February 08, 2007

best before august, 2009

It is not uncommon for the recipient of an email to read "I miss you" at the bottom of a letter. This statement very unremarkable in terms of its common colloquial usage in the English language. Most perplexing to me is the new and peculiar placement of symbol to follow this common statement; namely, a question mark. So the complete phrase may read as follows: "I miss you?” The implications of this statement? Unknown. I have never encountered this use of a question mark. The first time I encountered this phenomenon I passed it off as a typo or one writer’s idiosyncrasy. But what of the second and third times I received this odd statement from different writers? Something is afoot.

Recently I have been making a hobby of studying good-byes. I find them interesting. An interest perhaps similar to the kind a doctor would have on himself if repeatedly broke out in seizures. After much thought on the matter I have deduced the phrase "I miss you?" is typical of a type 2 friendship. Let's expand the idea:

1. Type 2 friends are good buddies where the relationship is based on experience i.e. seeing each other every day, hanging out, coffee, etc.
2. But they separate and never see each other again
3. This leads to a lack of new experiences from which to base the relationship. There is old experience but this quickly becomes irrelevant in light of current circumstances.
4. Years down the road, both parties feel conflictingly as to the extent of missing their former friend (FF). With having none but past and irrelevant shared experiences to cite, the FF’s intellectually know that they used to like each other but no longer have any hard experience to prove this idea.
5. Hence, the statement “I miss you?” is a perfect encapsulation of an individual’s conflicting emotions, experiences and ideas in the context of an expiring relationship. Brilliant.

Here’s a thought; do relationships have expiration dates similar to that found on milk cartons? Except that this expiration date is based upon some cosmic calculation of random circumstances in that lead to an estimated date of relational termination. It would be funny to meet someone and then stamp their forehead with a “best before august 2009”.

3 comments:

heidi said...

i think they do have expiration dates?

Megs said...

so if you were in an expirary relationship, would you restamp the person everytime you saw them again?

miss you.

KJ said...

No experiation dates.
P.S. When are you going to come get your mp3 player?