Between the years, when I was lying snuggled up on the sofa to send messages to people I loved, I made a typo when searching for contacts.

Instead of her favorite colleague, Johanna R.'s number popped up.

We were in the same circle of friends when we were studying, but we were never particularly close.

I briefly considered deleting her number, because to be honest I don't see why I should call Johanna again.

We haven't had contact since graduation six years ago.

I don't know if her number is still correct, or if her last name is still R. – I saw on social media that she has since married.

Julia Anton

Society Coordinator.

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I decided against it.

Admittedly also a bit out of laziness, because then I would have switched from Whatsapp to my contact list, searched for Johanna again and then had to delete her number, and I, lying there snuggled up on the sofa, didn't want to lift a finger than necessary.

Above all, I might have had to worry about my contact list in general, which contains 238 names and numbers.

There are good memories behind it

The number shouldn't be a boast, like it was on Facebook when you collected "friends" like panini pictures for the World Cup.

They just got together for ten, twelve years.

I'd be surprised if I was still in contact with half the people.

Quite a few are likely to be dead files, no connection under this number, maybe even reassigned a long time ago.

I keep them anyway.

Because now and then, maybe two or three times a year, I like to scroll through my contact list.

Not to call anyone.

But out of pure sentimentality.

Because this contact list contains the stages of my life, albeit in alphabetical rather than chronological order.

There are of course family and childhood friends, recognizable by the fact that they are all saved with only their first names.

(When I met the third Anna during my studies, surnames were added.) My contact list includes fellow students with whom I only worked once on a project, and those with whom I shared my lovesickness in the university canteen and they still do today are still my girlfriends.

There are the colleagues from internships and part-time jobs and even countless acquaintances that I made at the beginning of my Erasmus semester, but then lost sight of after two or three parties.

There is the whole year of the journalism school that I was allowed to attend.

And in the meantime, of course, all the people I met after moving to Frankfurt and in my working life have also been added.

Flat share parties, language school, sports courses

When I happen to come across all the old names because I want to call someone completely different, I'm usually happy.

Because I associate good memories with the vast majority of contacts.

At Johanna R.'s, I remember a flat share party with Vodka Apple.

It makes me laugh when I wrote down a Dutch classmate in the Italian language school: “Jan Gentile Sexy Timido Diecipack Superman” – which roughly means: the nice, sexy, shy, abs-packed Superman Jan. I’ll put it this way: It wasn’t accurate all of it.

But we had a pretty good time in Viareggio.

For a long time, I sweated twice a week with Turan and Silke in the same sports course and bet who could do the most burpees.

Some contacts are a mystery to me too.

There's Lutz, for example, no last name, just like Yannika, also Johannes G. I can't, with the best will in the world, remember ever getting to know a Lutz, I can't match Yannika and Johannas either.

Who are these people and what were they doing in my life?

But because I'm convinced that I'll remember at some point, I don't delete these contacts either.

Perhaps there is still a nice memory hidden behind them.