How Blackberry Ruined My Friendship...But Then Saved It

The Blackberry Outage of the Century.  I will never forget the day.  It was October 12th, 2011.  It started

like any other weekday.  I headed into work, checked my Outlook, TMZ.com, PerezHilton.com, People.com, FunnyOrDie.com, HelloGiggles.com and proceeded to BBM my best friend who lives 3,000 miles away.  Daily BBM is our ritual.  Every single day, all day from the time I get up until the time she goes to bed.  We chat about all the important topics and issues; TV shows from the previous night, celebrity tweets, and when she is officially going to ask me to be the Godmother of her soon to be newborn baby boy.

The day started out with the typical BBMs, "90210 has not been doing it for me this season."  Kristen said.  I replied, "Yeah, not for me either, but OMG, how about the ending of The Ringer?  Those last 30 seconds, every week, they get me every week.”  For some reason, maybe it was the three cups of coffee I had, but I was feeling bold that morning so I said something to her.  I said "I really think you should give Vampire Diaries another try."  Bringing up Vampire Diaries with Kristen is like beating a dead horse, who then wakes up, and kicks you in the face.  She watched pilot and an episode or two after, but could "never get into it."  Which bewilders me to this day, because she's into Twilight (as am I), but the VD has hotter vampires and amazing story lines.  (You all know what I'm talking about, Paul Wesley's brooding looks and Ian Somerhalder’s piercing eyes, pure art).  Anyway, we go back and forth and I tell her it’s the #1 most watched show on the CW,  so clearly there is something special there.  She's responds with how she can't have anymore TV shows on her plate.  I remind her all she watches on Thursday nights is Grey's Anatomy (and we all know how that is this season), Private Practice and Jersey Shore.  I tell her none of those shows are in the 8 PM timeslot as Vampire Diaries is, and I ask her what is it that she does between the hours of 8 and 9 on Thursday nights.  She responds with “Probably taking care of Peyton” (her two year old daughter).  I say “Probably?”  She says “Yeah, probably.” I respond and let her know that she is literally (not really) killing me and to give it one more chance.  She tells me “we'll see.”  I tell her I know what “we'll see” means. 

I can't speak for her, but I know at this point in time I was starting to truly build up irritation in my cubicle here in LA and I was wondering if she was doing the same from her living room couch in Jersey.  I told her I'm pretty sure we are legitimately in a fight.  I say “pretty sure” because we don't fight, ever.  She responds with the juvenile "you started it."  That was at 10 AM.  I was over all of this and decided not to respond. 

A half hour later I thought enough time had passed and I would smooth things over.  I asked her about a tweet I saw about Brad Womack and Emily Manyard.  I'm so NOT a Bachelor/Bachelor/Bachelor Pad girl, but Kristen lives and breathes that crap so I thought that question would bring us back to normal.  I heard nothing back from her.  I thought to myself that wow maybe she’s as mad as I was a half hour ago. I saw my BBM had been delivered but not read.  About an hour later I saw UberSocial wasn't working properly and I wasn’t getting any of my Facebook notifications.  I felt scared, alone and isolated from the outside world, I didn’t know if Kristen had died, or gone into labor or what was going on with the Conrad Murray trial.  It was like I had no contact with the real world.  I had to tweet from the web…yes, I said the web, so you know how bad it had gotten.

 

Finally at around noon Pacific Standard Time I got a text message.  "Chandra?" I responded immediately, “Omg! Hey!"  In that moment we were living our own personal 9/11. We were so relieved to hear from each other.   I should disclose that we NEVER talk on the phone, unless it's a dire emergency.  We also don't use SMS/MMS; call us snooty if you want, it’s just not our thing.  We strictly stick to BBM, Facebook, Twitter and the occasional Skype sesh, and the couple times a year airport pickup, when I head back east. I told her Blackberry is messed up in seven out of the seven continents in the world.  Our convo then went a little something like this:


Kristen: So all we can do is text and call?
Me: Yes, it's like God is testing.
Kristen: I'm about to fail the test.
Me: So you would bail on our friendship if for the rest of our lives we could only text and call?
Kristen: Text no...call yes.
Me: #agreed

Instantaneously we got to us.  I proceeded to ask her if I ever told her about the awesomeness that is La Croix water.  She said no.  We spent the next five minutes discussing it.  While we were discussing places on the East Coast that sell it slowly but surely our messages were coming in super delayed and finally after forty-five minutes of texting, we lost contact again.  Our last words to each other:


Me: I think my next blog will be "How Blackberry Ruined My Friendship"
Kristen: Ser.


Finally about seven hours later, that tiny little BBM notification popped up on the top of my screen.  We were back in action.  She let me know that 'Revenge' was really good and I reminded her to go buy La Croix the next day.


This whole fiasco has taught me a lot, while Blackberry almost ended an eight year friendship at the same time, it saved it. If you hadn't crashed when you did Blackberry, things could have gone very differently.  We could have had a fight of epic proportions, and for the rest of my life I would have blamed Blackberry and the Vampire Diaries for ruining the best friendship in the world.  So, thank you Blackberry for crashing, it reminded both Kristen and I that life is precious and we can’t take each other for granted, because in a one breath, you could be gone.  It makes you appreciate what you have.  Kristen, if you are reading this, please Vampire Diaries, give it  one more shot.  Friends forever, forever friends.
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