The Daily Procrastinator

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of college students will be going on spring break this week. Let’s face it, procrastinators, those kids are a menace. Don’t go out there and risk your sanity among the inebriated youth; stay safely indoors and read The Daily Procrastinator. It’s the safer choice. We’ll have new content for you each and every day. In case you missed anything last week, let’s take a look back.

After viewing The Watchmen, Flash Cap offered his critique of Hollywood’s current movie rating system. Full frontal nudity is full frontal nudity, whether it’s computer generated or not…right?

TallGirl overheard a conversation at her local coffee shop during which several young women discussed the fallout between Rihanna and Chris Brown. What she heard blew her mind, and it will likely blow yours, too. Later in the week, TallGirl examined the xCount phenomenon on FaceBook, and she wrapped up her contributions by confessing her fear of treadmills.

BigRedPoet helped the world celebrate the 69th birthday of Chuck Norris this week by examining the star’s odd brand of fame. A few days later, he offered some pointers to help procrastinators everywhere polish their spoken English to a beautiful shine.

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The Daily Procrastinator: Contributing to the Dramatic Reduction of Your Personal Productivity

Ah, prom night: the source of many exes.

Ah, Facebook: the place where the past meets present, sometimes with jarring results.  Childhood friends, recent colleagues and family members mingle in a “worlds collide” sort of way.  It’s a fascinating social experiment.

I was chatting with a Facebook friend/colleague recently when he asked me, “What’s your xCount?”  This was his own personal term — one that I must admit that I love — for the exes that have crawled out of the woodwork and once again made themselves part of your life.  

I scanned my list of friends.  ”I’ve got two… and a half,” I told him.  He told me that you can’t count anyone as a half, but I think that a prom date who appeared in pictures but actually spent the night sitting in the lobby outside the hotel ballroom qualifies as something less than a full xCount point.  And believe me, after that fiasco at 17, I was thoroughly shocked to see that he wanted to connect with me.

He had four full-fledged exes on his list, not including one whose request he rejected outright.  ”Sometimes, the requests are just too creepy.”  Many of my friends agree.  There was the one who was contacted by the guy who stalked her after they broke up.  Another got a request from the girlfriend who had certain… uh… shall we call them “unique” sexual proclivities?  And what about that guy you hooked up with after the frat party sophomore year?  From first loves to major heartbreaks, they’re all out there, and they just might be looking for you.

Who's in my inbox? I can't bring myself to look.

What prompts exes to want to get in touch again, especially those that you haven’t spoken to in a decade or more?  As for mine, I still have a good relationship — albeit separated by time and distance — with one of them, and accepted the second just out of a ridiculous sense of curiosity.  You know the kind.  They’re the ones whose request is met with audible talking back to the computer.  ”Oh my god, John Doe?  How the hell did he find me?”  These requests are met with a connection, a few obligatory messages back and forth, and the obligatory Googling of their name to figure out what they’ve been doing since the 90s.

His story was slightly different.  He had one with fond memories who had sent the occasional Christmas card, one who had been a complete WTF entry, and two who were clearly taking Google stalking to the next level.  ”I don’t mind connecting with them,” he said, “but it’s a little weird that they have to respond to everything I post, as though they’re spending their days just waiting for me to update my status.”  Weird, indeed.

It seems that nearly everyone has an xCount greater than zero.  An informal survey of friends reveals xCount numbers between 3 and 9, each bringing varying levels of discomfort and baggage with them.  One, however, through the benefits of a new married surname and a move to a new continent has managed to avoid the xCount concept altogether, and was stunned to learn that I had an xCount.  

“I mean it’s lovely that they want to get in touch and it speaks volumes about your effect on their lives ….and yet: eeeeek.  I always wondered if I was crazy/unfriendly for not wanting contact or if the crazies were the ones who did.”

There’s no shortage of posts about this very topic.  This one talks about being the one that’s obsessed with the ex on Facebook.  This one talks about the shock of seeing the photo of the ex appear in the inbox.  Yet another talks about why your ex should never see your Facebook account.

Should you friend exes?  Only you know for sure.  Of course, you could always accept their invitation, learn everything you need to know about them, and then stealthily “unfriend” the person, leaving them to discover your passive-aggressive acceptance and rejection at their leisure.  But does that make you more or less creepy than the creepy ex that you’re trying to avoid?