It's me.

How many phone numbers do you have saved on your cell phone? A lot, right? Do you save the phone numbers of everyone you've ever talked to on the phone? Forever? Every now and then I go through my phone and delete a bunch of numbers I figure I won't be needing anymore. This has gotten me in trouble on several occasions.

Here's one example. I went on a date early last summer with a guy and it wasn't really a success (understatement) and by around September I noticed his name in my numbers list and decided that since I hadn't heard from him since, and I because had no intention of calling him, it shouldn't be a problem to delete his number. Fastforward to October when I had the following awkward textversation with him (I didn't know it was him since I had deleted him):

His text: "Hey, how are you?"
Me, figuring I could maybe find out who it was through context: "Fine. What's new with you?"
Him: "Not much, how've you been?"
Me, starting to kind of panic...."Good! You?"
...it went on like this a couple more texts until I finally had to say, "This is embarrassing, but I don't have your number in my phone. Can you remind me who this is?
Him: "Oh! It's me, _______. We went on a date this summer.... we went to ______.....we ate at _________...I met you through _______..." Giving more information than was necessary, clearly thinking that because I didn't have his number saved I also had no memory of him anymore.)
Me: "Oh of course I remember you! How are you?"

Awkward.

Then a few days ago I had a textversation in which I had no idea who the person was and which ended with them saying, "love ya" in the last text. Huh? Who loves me? I'm assuming it's a girl because guys don't usually say "love ya." It's too late to find out now. At that point it would have been awkward to ask.

I've been on the other side of this too. I used to have this really close friend, we'll call him Brent. Brent helped me get through a difficult time in my life and was one of my closest friends for awhile. He decided one spring to head out west for school in the fall. Over the summer before he left we started drifting apart in anticipation of his leaving but I still considered him one of my good friends and we got together as time permitted. About a month after he left, I realized I hadn't heard from him in awhile so I texted him and said, "Hey! What's up?!" He responded with "Who's this?"

I was IRATE. I immediately called him and without saying who I was, said, "I can't BELIEVE you deleted my number from your phone!!" He recognized my voice and started laughing while at the same time saying, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!" He explained that he was dating this girl and was afraid she'd be jealous if he had a bunch of girls phone numbers in his phone. I told him that was insane and that we were just friends so she shouldn't care. He agreed and returned my phone number to his phone, motivated I'm sure by fear of what would happen if he didn't.

This deleted number thing reminds me of the old days before caller ID when people would call and instead of saying, "Hi, it's (insert name here)," they'd say, "Hey, it's me." Leaving you to quickly sort through your friends and figure out who it was from just those three syllables.

But this is a bit worse because with that, if you guessed wrong you could just say, "oh, sorry, you sounded different, must be a bad connection." But when it comes to cell phones, people expect you to know who it is because you have their number saved. No one memorizes anyone's numbers anymore - if it's not saved in your phone, you have no way of calling them. So when you delete someone from your phone, you're basically saying, "I'm done with you. I expect we'll never talk again and I'm fine with that."

Which brings me back to my original question: how long should I save a person's phone number? Have you gotten into trouble with this before?