Friends

My best friend from childhood lived in the house behind mine, diagonally. A quick run through our back yards and we were together. 

My best friend from high school lived about two miles from my house, as driven in my car – okay, my mother's car. Closer as the crow flies, but neither of us were crows, so we drove or had to be driven. 

My young adult friends were neighbors or coworkers. Close at one part of the day or another. 

In 1996, we got our second computer and it had a modem. I was not very computer savvy, but I did have AOL and could finally send and receive e-mail and met many nice people in chat rooms. My community of friends now spanned the globe. 

This new phenomenon, friends you have never met, isn't really entirely new. In ages past, there was something called "pen pals" and people who had never met would write long letters to each other with weeks or months or even years passing between correspondence. They knew they were separated by distances too great to travel, but they still wrote.

Some were established in school days as a teacher's project and kept going. Some were people interested in some topic and writing to others who were like minded, some famous and some not. Some of these pen pal letters blossomed into more. Elizabeth Barrett met Robert Browning this way. 

Beginning in 1996, my insular world became global. I could instantaneously communicate with people on every continent. It was amazing. You can't imagine the speed of a 2400 baud modem as compared to the Pony Express.

With this new method of communication came a new set of problems. For me, a word person, one of them was what in the hell do I call these people? They aren't acquaintances since I've never met them. In fact, one could have walked past me at any time and I wouldn't have known. They weren't friends for I hardly knew them. I mean, how much of what we say online is the honest, to goodness, all out truth. 

I never told about the stupid things I did. I never confessed to being less than the picture I wanted to paint. This realm was a world where I could remake myself in my own image. I wouldn't be petty or mean spirited. I wouldn't be a klutz or graceless. I would deliver the perfect bon mot or riposte in each verbal dual. Who would know any different? And how many other people were going to reveal their flaws and so why should I? So, how well did any of know each other. That's not real and it's not friends. 

That's what I told myself.

But I've been online for over a decade now. I'm a little more comfortable calling my long standing … I still don't know what to call them, really. We write back and forth. We celebrate and commiserate. We share successes and console over failures. 

And now, I not only have e-mail, I'm involved in forums where people are dear to me. I know so much about so many of my friends, but not how they look. They could still walk right past me and I wouldn't know them. But when something happens, it is real. Cyber is the way we converse, but cyber isn't where my heart lies. 

I still care about people and there are real people on the other end of the electron stream. Many of them I have come to know. I'm still talking to people I first met in an AOL chat room over a decade ago. I'm closer to my online friends than I am with old neighbors from places where I used to live. I still e-mail with them, but not as frequently. Unless I have no e-mail address, then it's once a year Christmas letters. 

But I still feel funny. Some of my best friends, some of the people I run toward to share my happy moments, reach toward for consolation in sad times, and offer a virtual shoulder to when times are tough for them … these people are "virtual" in the world of electronics. But they are real in my heart. 

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas. What happens online remains with me cherished and tended. My friends. Yes, they are my friends. 

Sied, I've know your first name for a long time, but you are sied to me and always will be. Dear friend, I miss you already. Though we never met, we talked on the phone a couple times and we were … what? Internet Idiots? Cyber Sidekicks? Network Ninnies? Friends. Coworkers. Supporters. Cheerleaders. Always just a click away.

Sleep well. Your friends are still rooting for you.