Sometimes when you’re bored out of your mind, or sitting on the toilet without a magazine in arms reach, you pull out that cell phone and start combing through the lost barrage of names in your phone book.  Lost old friends, single serving friends you met on a random night, or even that name that just as a single letter “M” who you can’t recollect to save the shirt on your back.

Occasionally these lost souls have a way of coming back from the past to once again appear in that Recent Call list.  A friend recently asked me what it means when a guy she used to date or “hang out” with contacts you after a long period of radio silence.

That random phone call can have a few different meanings behind it.  A lot can be told by the time the call was placed.  For ease of consumption, let’s just throw them into two different categories.

The ‘Before 10PM’ and ‘After 10PM’ phone call.

The Before 10PM calls are usually innocent.  And by innocent I mean being just a call to catch up and see how life is rolling along or just a last ditch effort to try to genuinely rekindle the flames (which ticket was punched and departed w/the Titanic).  Who knows, maybe they want to venture down that road to being your ­opposite sex friend­.  Scrabble anyone?

The After 10PM calls are 95% all of one variety…  a late night stab in the dark to see if you want to play catch up on some old time fun.  Yes, I mean the infamous ‘booty-call’.

Your head may initially be in mass hysteria thinking ‘WTF?’, but this is the truth from everyone that I’ve conferred with about the verdict of this trial.  Usually this call is sparked by an emotional power outage from a bad breakup, one too many nights listening to Blister in the Sun by their lonesome, or that effervescent beverage known to all as alcohol.

Know the rules of engagement when fielding one of these potential ‘re-run’ calls.  Knowing the situation before you answer will always give you the upper hand.  Hang on a sec… my phone is ringing…