What I Never Knew

I never knew

If anybody liked me

Or disliked me

And that—

Oh, that was a blessing

And it was one of those strange blessings

Where you didn’t know you were being blessed

Until the blessing disappeared

Because now

Due to the, uh

What happens

On the phones

And the computers—

By the way

I’m not ignorant

When it comes to technology

It just serves me better

To pretend I am

You see what I’m saying there?

But no matter how I play it

I still have to engage

With technology

Because I am a person of the world

And this—all this new stuff—

The world is always

Going to be made

Of new stuff

No point resisting it

Harken back to human contact

By all means

But you have to work

With what’s in the pantry

Is how I look at it

For years

I had no clue

About who

Most of the people in my life

Or, you know, on the periphery

Of my life

Really were

I knew a little

About everybody’s politics

And a little about their personal stuff

I knew if they had kids or not

And if they got a divorce

But that was the near and far of it

Unless we were very close

And now I know so many things

About people

I am otherwise

Not all that close with

And the biggest thing for me—

Because all that other stuff

Is all right

I don’t mind knowing things

About people

I’m kind of a snoop

--But the biggest thing for me

Is that now we have a way

Of telling each other

Very directly

Whether or not

We like each other

And it’s called unfriending

Now, we never had that before

If somebody sort of quietly decided

That they didn’t want to associate with you

Provided they weren’t around all that much to begin with

You wouldn’t even know it

You might think—

Oh, I haven’t seen so-and-so

In awhile

But most of the time

You wouldn’t think about it

All that much

But now

You go to send somebody a message

Letting them know you saw their cousin

At the supermarket or something—

And before

You’d leave a message

On their answering machine

And if they never got back to you

You would just assume

They were busy

Or what-have-you

And that would be fine

--But now you go and you see it

Unfriended

Oh boy

And people can dismiss that

And they often do

As—

Oh well

It doesn’t mean anything

But it’s an action

It’s an action you take

And you’re not taking

The action to, uh

Unfollow

No, you are making

A statement

The only equivalent would be, uh—

Walking up to someone

In the 90’s

And, uh, ripping out the page in your address book

That had their contact information on it

I mean, it’s really violent

If you think about it

It’s just a very passive action

In the, uh, executing of it, you know?

But everybody’s very aware now

And, uh, while I do think

It’s valuable that we are aware—

You know, we fought for awareness

We fought for it

--But now that we have it, it’s—

It’s an adjustment

It’s definitely

An adjustment