So as those of you who are fol­low­ing me on Twitter @cleversmedia are prob­a­bly aware I’m fol­low­ing Douglas Coupland on Twitter. 

Sadly, Coupland isn’t fol­low­ing me. But nonethe­less, being the per­sis­tent bas­tard I am, I try to Reply To — or RT as it’s known — to as manyof Doug’s Twitter posts as seem to be of inter­est to me. Sadly, Doug doesn’t respond. I feel bad. 

Doug gets my mes­sages. I know he does. He must. But not even a smi­ley emoti­con do I get. Each time I get some­thing inter­est­ing from Doug’s feed I think to myself — today! Today will be the day the Twitter Gods smile down upon me and Doug will respond. Carefully, slowly, I craft my 140 char­ac­ter mes­sages select­ing every vowel, every con­so­nant. I use tiny urls whever pos­si­ble. Still nothing.

I con­sole myself with the fact that a few years ago Doug had a stalker — maybe thats why he doesn’t respond. Still, I feel sad. I con­tinue to wait for the per­fect moment. I tweet encour­ag­ing things to Doug when he feels sad. I answer all of his tweeted ques­tions with thought­ful suc­cinct answers. “It’ll be ok Doug,” I tweet. Still nothing. 

This is worse than when I wrote my “Dear Oprah” let­ter. I search for answers. I think seri­ously about start­ing a Facebook group about Tweeting Etiquette. Surely, Doug has dis­ap­pointed some his other more than 1,000 fol­low­ers. We must be heard! I pon­der what to do.… Doug is in Hawaii vis­it­ing his alma mater. Hours later, Doug is remem­ber­ing how 27 was the worst year of his life.

I turn 27 in a few days. Maybe Doug will see this and Tweet me a birth­day mes­sage. I dream of what it might say. “This is gonna hurt” or “Happy 27.” Still no smi­ley emoticon.