ATLANTA—Having long assumed he and his four closest friends from college were simply drifting apart as they got older, local 30-year-old Brian Paulson told reporters Wednesday he has slowly come to realize he is the only member of the group losing touch with the others.
Paulson, who shared a five-bedroom apartment with Erik Bannen, Stephen Leona, Adam Kurtz, and Jason Lu during his last three years at the University of Virginia, said that after seeing a recent photo of his four “best buds” together on Facebook, he began to understand his core group of college friends was not, in fact, falling out of contact.
“I figured everyone had kind of gone their own way and had just gradually grown more distant since graduation, but apparently I’m the only one who’s done that,” said Paulson, who explained he had been under the false impression that his friends saw as little of each other these days as he sees of them until clicking on an album labeled “Camping + Rafting” on Kurtz’s Facebook profile. “I’ll give those guys a call once or twice a year and email ‘happy birthday’ to them—I thought that’s what all of us were doing. But from what I’m gathering now, the four of them must talk all the time.”
“Apparently, those old college friendships aren’t fading away at all,” he added. “Not for them, at least.”
According to Paulson, the idea that his friends had not slowly disbanded started to become clear to him after seeing that first photo of the men with their arms around each other, cutting up for the camera just as they might have a decade ago. Following the initial discovery, Paulson reportedly looked through more social media posts, where he found additional pictures showing the group playing Frisbee and grilling together on Bannen’s back porch, noting with surprise that the dates on the images were mostly from the past three years—a period in which Paulson said he hadn’t seen a single one of his old friends in person.
Additionally, Paulson is said to have perused his former roommate Lu’s Instagram account, which documented what is apparently an annual Colorado brewery tour and biking trip taken by the group, which Paulson said he had a faint recollection of being invited to several years ago, but remembered being too busy to join them at the time and texting his regrets.
The local man confirmed he also stumbled upon a series of posts on his friends’ Facebook timelines from which he inferred that Bannen, Leona, Kurtz, and Lu had started a fantasy football league together. Based on his unfamiliarity with the phrase, Paulson surmised that their league name, “Pablo’s Revenge,” was most likely a reference to a recent inside joke he had not been made aware of.
“You’d think the fact that we all live in different cities and have full-time jobs and significant others would keep us from remaining close, but it doesn’t seem to stop them from getting together at all,” said a visibly puzzled Paulson, who cited a recent status update from Kurtz expressing his excitement about the University of Virginia’s upcoming homecoming weekend in which all of the group members’ names except Paulson’s were tagged. “After looking around online a little bit, I found out Jason made Stephen his kid’s godfather, and Adam had flown in all the way from Seattle to visit with the other three guys. I had no clue.”
“I don’t understand what happened—I was under the impression we were slowly losing touch over time,” he continued. “I guess I always thought that was something we’d do together.”