Old Friends

One of the nicest surprises about social networking is finding long lost friends who meant a lot to me at one time.  Many years ago I stumbled into a chat room in Yahoo called Books and Literature and started what would turn out to be a long (nearly 15 years now) run with some folks who really like books and reading although we actually spend little time talking about either.  Along the way we had romances, marriages, children born, divorces and even some deaths.  I have cried and laughed with these people so many times that it broke my heart when Yahoo kept changing its setup which caused many of us to leave. 

One year I went on a road trip to meet some of them face-to-face (considered dangerous back then) and was delighted to see how their real-life personas were so much like their online presence. Some of us set up web pages back when it was a little tricky to do that and tried to keep up our friendships. We struggled for several years with an e-mail list but it never really had the same feel of the old days of chat.  Now thanks to Facebook (did I actually write that?) one of the hearty members has created a private group (similar to the old private rooms on Yahoo) and we have all been busily scouring our  address books for lost members.  We like to sit on the clueless/confused couch and gaze at our enormous book collection while waiting for someone to do something silly or fix something to eat or drink. 

Facebook has a chat function that allows us to gather once again and talk in real time and I am so pleased to see these friendly faces once again.  It's like we never parted....