Random Questions...

How do you tell someone you miss them?

More importantly, how do you tell someone you miss them and a particular situation without ever having been in that situation before? So for example, say you met someone who you thought was wonderful. You can imagine some kind of relationship with them, some kind of nest, some kind of life built together. All of this imagined within the first 5, 10 minutes of meeting them. And then the party or the gathering or whatever social event that brought you two together is over. And you never see them again. You don't get the chance to tell them about your plans, goals, ambitions, feelings. How do you tell this person you miss them without ever really knowing them? And how do you tell them without coming across as an obsessive, delusional psycho?

Or say you have a child, but you don't see this child often (read: at all). The child's other parent and you are estranged, and for reasons much to complicated to write out, you do not see the child. You do not have much of a relationship (read: at all). Yet, it is possible to feel that twinge of sadness on Mother's/Father's/Parent day. How do you say "I miss you" to someone you don't actually have a relationship with? Or rather, "I miss what I wish we had."

This question is courtesy of Chuck Klosterman, whom I love for reasons much too complicated to write out.

"Here's a question I like to ask people when I'm 5/8 drunk: Let's say you had the ability to make a very brief phone call into your own past. You are (somehow) given the opportunity to phone yourself as a teenager; in short, you will be able to communicate with the fifteen-year-old version of you. However, you will only get to talk to your former self for fifteen seconds. As such there's no way you will be able to explain who you are, where or when you're calling from, or what any of this lunacy is supposed to signify. You will only be able to give the younger version of yourself a fleeting, abstract message of unclear origin.

What would you say to yourself during these fifteen seconds?"