The Culmination -ation

As I was making my short-list of people to invite to my graduation party in the summer, I realized how many people I DON'T want to invite. Not in the "I hate you" way; just in the "There are too many of you out there, and I am only capable of properly knowing about thirty-two of you" way.

It's no mystery. I know too many people. We all know too many people. We don't have any barriers left to knowing a double-digited percentile of the civilized world. There's no way to appreciate anyone for an appropriate amount of time and with a reasonable level of effort if you have seven hundred sixty-nine other people clamoring for you to be their own underappreciated friend.

What happened to the days when you knew sixteen people in the world, and seven of them were related to you, and another two of them had Tuberculosis? You couldn't be picky. You had to devote your time to the remaining seventeen people, or else you would die of lonlieness and despair. That would be stupid. You might as well hang out with the guy coughing blood.

But now we know seven-hundred and three perfectly unrelated people who don't cough blood, and most of them have college degrees and mid-size cars. All of a sudden, everyone is cool. Then what? We start forgetting our own family because we know forty-two Stevens and thirty-seven Julies and one hundred seventy-two Matt F.'s and four Jesus's, so our sixth-cousins will fall out of our mind and we'll have to Google them or call our third-cousins just to find out their proper names.

Maybe there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.

Maybe I don't want to make a ziti casserole for more than thirty-two people.