To Chat, Or Not To Chat?

Last night a name popped up on my gchat list that I hadn't seen in a LONG time. I think this is partially because I told my gmail account not to show him on my chat list and that doesn't necessarily apply on my phone, but either way, its someone I haven't thought about in quite a while, and haven't talked to in probably 2+ years. That part is partially because he has a tendency to fall off the face of the earth for large periods of time, and primarily because I got sick of being the one to initiate all the conversations. What kind of a friend is that? Not one, I decided, and stopped trying. It wasn't really a big loss either. I mean honestly - we met in the military, deployed together, and once we came back I think we saw each other exactly one time, for about 5 minutes in a parking lot. And we came back 5 1/2 years ago.

But, back to the whole popping up on my gchat list. Sometimes, gchat on my phone gets confused and forgets to refresh itself, so he was popping up there as being online. I looked at his name several times, thought about it, wished I hadn't seen it, thought a little more, and eventually decided wht the hell, and shot him a chat - well hello there. That's all it said. Of course, there was no response by the time I went to bed, because, in fact, he was not online. But my phone didn't realize that until this morning when, after seeing an email from him responding to a chat while sent offline, and with him still showing as online, I signed off then back on again. But back to that email - Wow out of the blue! What, where, and how are things?

I replied, somewhat briefly - I'm trying to share too much at this point - and we'll see how it goes. But all I can think as I'm writing this was why did I bother? Its not like it will go anywhere (and I'm talking one hundred percent in the realm of friendship/acquaintance chatter here people... Matt and I are happy and just fine and still together, etc).  And I've worked so hard to cut people like that completely out of my life. So I'll play it by ear, but next step will surely be deleting his information completely out of my system so there's no chance of seeing that name pop up again and tempting me to do something less than intelligent like chatting again.