Thursday, December 04, 2003
A Friend is Just a Weirdo You Haven’t Met
Enough of the maudlin stuff. I’ve been sick all week but I’m feeling almost human today, and ready to start criticizing and belittling the world again. Did you miss me, during my recent bout of sentimentality? Yeah well I didn’t miss you either.
Over the past few months I’ve been lucky to turn a few “imaginary” friends real - I’ve met blog buddies personally, and in every case, it’s been even better than I could have anticipated. Cool people, great conversations, a sense of starting not-from-scratch… It’s becoming clear to me that we bloggers are not a random bunch of folk, we are self-selected for both physical and spiritual beauty. But of course, in any given case, you could be horribly wrong about somebody. Each time I sat around an empty restaurant or stood alone in a crowded bar, waiting to meet someone who’d been no more than a name on line for me to that moment, I had to ask myself, “so, what do you do if he’s a serial killer? If she’s a zealot? If they want to share their passion for ritual scarification with me?” Luckily that’s never actually come to pass, but here is a short list of the things I always hope are not true about the on-line friend I’m about to meet in person for the first time:
* RenFair garb on city streets
* competitive pyromania
* drool shunt
* OCD - with a ballpeen hammer and a squeakytoy
* leper who likes to hug
* armed and angry
* filth-caked hoveldweller
* paranoid bodybuilder
I just run through this list in my mind a few times and then a perfectly lovely and socially appropriate person comes up to tell me that he or she is the person I’ve been waiting for. Makes me think that keeping this list has helped me avoid run-ins with really dangerously weird folk. However, you benign weirdos, when are you coming out to California? We have lots to catch up on! Just leave the costumes, weapons and pet reptiles at home for our first meeting. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m boring.
