When you’ve decided to stop talking to someone there are a number of things that can be unpleasant. When they find out that you’re avoiding them, that’s generally unpleasant. Or if they see you out and about, clearly not dead as they had suspected. Also when they talk to others who have spoken with you recently and they figure out that they’re the only one you aren’t talking to.

All pretty unpleasant.

However, the worst part of ceasing communications with a person is that you forever lose their ringtone. It’s always a really good ringtone, too. It’s never the sounds of a dying cat that you’ve assigned to them. Not the opening sequence from a clogging routine that you’d never want to hear again. It’s not even a crap song, generally. No Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

No. It’s always “I Don’t Care” by Apocalyptica, or something by The Script. It’s a really rockin’ chorus from your favorite band or something and now you can never hear it again. You didn’t know, afterall, when you were assigning tones that you’d eventually have a social breakup.

I have recently stopped talking to a particular one of my girlfriends. The reasons can be easily boiled down to she’s a bad influence with a side of stultifyingly stupid and tedious. Her ringtone was Misery Business. I Loved that ringtone and now I will never get it back.

And before you ask, because I know you’re thinking it, no you can’t just change them. Ringtones are my caller ID. That will be forever associated with her. Now I have to go out and find more ringtones for the new people I am meeting. True, after six months of never hearing a ringtone you might think I would forget whose it was. You’d be thinking wrong, though. That’s why I use them as caller ID in the first place, because I can remember those things.

Bah!