The night that FitBloggin’ concluded, my room mates and I started talking in our dark hotel room like you do at slumber parties, where you’re just voices without bodies, sort of like how we are on the Internet. We were talking about the bloggers we’d met and the bloggers we read and that’s when I asked, “Does anyone remember Fat Bitch?”

“YES! She used to wear a bag on her head with a face drawn on it to remain anonymous!”

“She was hilarious! Then she just stopped blogging.”

“What about that one blog, Yo Ho Ho or something? There were pirates, remember?”

“Oh yeah, what was that called?”

“You Heave Ho! She was a pirate who wanted to lose her booty.”

“I miss A Dumbbell in a Home Gym.” We all sighed in agreement. “Hopeful Loser, too.”

“I miss The Fat Slayer.”

“How about Fatty McBlog? Remember that time she tripped on the stairs and almost crushed her neighbor?”

“Wait, do you mean Fatty McButterpants?”

“No, Fatty McBlog. There is a Fatty McButterpants, but she doesn’t write Fatty McBlog.”

Silence.

Then we broke into laughter, because how many times do you get to use the phrase “Fatty McButterpants” in conversation, not once, but twice? We were speaking a highly specialized language that only a handful of people in the world might understand. It’s great that new people are taking up blogging all the time, but I bet newbie fitness bloggers don’t remember any of those blogs. I feel like something is being lost, like there will be no one left to remember them.

It’s sad that the people who used to let me peek into their lives have shut their doors and pulled their curtains closed. Missing in action. No forwarding address. It made me think of how fleeting so many relationships are. I would like to have met them, in real life, in person, without bags over their heads. Some of the missing bloggers worry me, like Fat Queen who posted about going in for surgery and was never heard from again. Or Beth from Act Boldly who talked about being depressed, posted that she was fine and then never came back.

I sometimes feel like an old lady of blogging, waving my keyboard at the kiddies, shouting, “I remember when we used Greymatter to run our blogs! I remember when LiveJournal was owned by Americans!” I wonder how many people are left to remember those bloggers who entertained us when our bosses weren’t looking at our computer screens, and wrote posts that made us comment even though we usually lurk. They meant something to me. Did they mean something to you?

Here’s to those that came before us! Which bloggers do you miss? Who do you hope is remembered?