I Like You Better as a Number

I lost all of my phone contacts last week.

And yes,

I restarted my phone and re-synced it and attempted to re-back it up and slammed it against a wall and shook it a bunch of times and screamed at the computer while reading countless useless Apple support answers written in broken English and etc etc etc

alas — very (un)surprisingly, my (complete lack of) technical prowess and ~~half-assed~~ ardent attempts at data recovery were no match for the infuriating specimen that is a malfunctioning iPhone.

And thus began the ohsoenjoyable/never-ending/futile process of re-entering every contact into my phone based upon past conversations — most of which I barely remember and some of which I desperately wish to forget (I'm talking to you, random awkward post-Tinder convo from over a year ago and strange drunken ramblings from much less than over a year ago...)

Then, about 10 or so contacts in, I came upon a conversation with a casual acquaintance of sorts, whose name I had never actually saved into my iPhone in the first place.

Even weirder? I consciously made the decision to leave it off again.

Which is when I realized that there were certain people I prefer to routinely see as a number, versus a name.

And why?

I couldn't really tell you.

Mind you — these aren't random Uber drivers or delivery men or quick, one-off, contacts .

These are legitimate people. People that I see frequently enough that they should, at the very least, warrant a title in my tawdry iPhone,

and yet . . .

10-digit numbers they remain.

So what is it?

is it an unwillingness to attribute a certain person significance?

or a reluctance to commit to a long-lasting relationship?

or maybe it's just enjoying that strange sense of mystery that comes along with a numerical text message from a seemingly unknown number?

(like when a new user would message me on AIM, and instead of assuming that it was (obviously) my best friend's 23rd-going-on-24th attempt at an artsy-but-not-too-artsy sounding screen name, I would assume that it was actually the cute guy in school who had somehow found my screenname and now wanted to ask me on a "date" / go awkwardly hold hands and think about maybe-but-probably-not kissing at the new Napoleon Dynamite movie).