When Harry Met Sally In 2013
By Almie Rose
They would meet on Facebook because Sally would post (under her customized settings she created, viewable to “friends” and “friends of friends” but hidden from “work colleagues” and “environmental studies classmates” and “ex boyfriends and lovers” but still available to anyone tagged) on her Timeline wall inquiring about a cross-county trip companion. Sally’s friend would reply suggesting her boyfriend, Harry, and Harry would chime in on the thread with jokes about how he won’t plug in his iPod for the whole trip, although he does have a wide variety of travel music based on not just location, but weather, and Sally wouldn’t be able to tell if he’s joking or not. They drive together.
Harry would tweet the entire way there. Sally would explain why she doesn’t have Twitter. Harry is baffled. “Don’t you want to be a journalist?” “Yes, I do.” “Well journalists should keep in touch with the latest news, and share their experiences.” “Well who says I have to do that through Twitter?” “I do.” “And who are you?” “I’m someone who uses Twitter.” “Harry?” “Yes?” “You’re a twit.”
Once they’re both living in NYC, they would share their OkCupid dating stories and Harry would explain why E Harmony isn’t the way to go – “It’s the name, it’s too optimistic, at least with OkCupid, they’re saying, ‘This, this is just okay.’”
Then one night Sally would see on Facebook that her ex changed his relationship status to “engaged.” She would delete all of her Pinterest wedding boards and text Harry, “HE’S ENGAGED! SHE WORKS IN HIS OFFICE. SHE’S A PARALEGAL. HER NAME IS KIMBERLY!” He would come right over and they’d sleep together.
Sally would obsessively text Harry after they had sex and Harry would start to get really freaked out and he would go over it with Bruno Kirby’s character while they’re playing Xbox and Harry would say something like, “You’re with a woman, you leave her, you think you left her, but you didn’t really leave her, she’s still there, she’s in your phone, and your phone is in your pants, so technically, she’s still in your pants, and that’s the problem,” and Bruno Kirby would say something like, “Well yeah, so turn off your phone,” “I can’t turn off my phone, she’ll know,” “Well text her back,” “I already did,” “And?” “And the texts, they don’t stop, she’s like a–a river, a babbling brook of texts, of– ‘Hey are you there,’ ‘Hey are you ignoring me,’ ‘Hey are we okay,’ and there’s so many Hey, hey, heys, I’m thinking, ‘Hey, maybe we should slow down.'” “Did you tell her that?” “You can’t tell a woman that.”
Sally would irritate Harry almost to the point of no return. His text replies would become one-word responses and Sally would be furious and take Carrie Fisher’s character’s advice and hide Harry’s activity from her Facebook newsfeed and unfollow him on Twitter, which she would now regret succumbing to. (“She unfollowed me on Twitter. This is way more serious than I thought. And plus, she was the only one who would re-tweet me, aside from my mother.”) This silence would make Harry realize he misses her because he maybe loves her.
“So call her and have the talk,” “I can’t call her, that’s too extreme, we usually text,” “So text her,” “I can’t text her, that’s too casual,” “Send her an email?” “I guess I could do that,” so Harry would write an email including some desperate Casablanca references, and she would respond that she’s angry at him for disappearing after they had sex, and she accuses him of not caring, but he really does. So he would make a video of everything he’d like to say to Sally, and it would that big romantic yet realistic speech about love that he gives at the end of the movie, except this time, it’s in the form of a YouTube video, and it would go viral and Sally would say, “You confessed your love for me over YouTube? It’s things like that that make me love you and hate you at the same time.” “Would you have preferred Instagram?”
Or something like that.