Gifts From the Internet

Driving past the Gosselin home with Amy from Ohio got me thinking about some of the wonderful people I've met online. I mean, not just have communicated with online, but have actually met in person after having been initially connected by the Internet.

The first person I met on the Internet was my friend Kathy K., around 1997. At the time, Kathy was 16 and living with her parents above their Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn, and I was about 41. We met up posting on an All My Children fan site. Kathy had a mondo crush on a certain AMC cutie, and I knew the actor's aunt, who lives in my community. (Today he's an accomplished artist ~ check him out.) Later Kathy worked as an usher at the Lion King theatre in the city and she got my older son and I excellent tickets for the show. She is also the friend who invited me, years ago, to be a talent escort at red carpet events in the city, a fun hobby I continue to enjoy to this day. Now Kathy is a talented actor who you may have seen on any of the many commercials or prime time shows she's been on in the past few years.

I met my friend Barby soon after I started eBaying in 1999. We shared a love of Blue Fish clothing and often bought and sold from each other online. It turned out Barby liked to shop at the outlets near me in Reading PA, so we ended up occasionally getting together for lunch. Eventually I asked Barby if she'd like to escort with me at a red carpet event in New York City. I think it was the Daytime Emmys, maybe six or seven years ago. We had a great time. Since then, Barby and I have worked together in the city a couple of times, had several Thai lunches together, and gotten together for various other things. She shares fabric with me and I sew her buttonholes for her. Barby's one of those wonderful friends I can be silly or serious with, and she's got one of the kindest hearts I've ever known. It's been a great ten years.

Most of us who communicate online will never meet in person, but a couple I have met and visited with a few times are my friends Sue and Bill from Ohio. Sue and I met when she bought a Blue Fish outfit from me, and then after she paid for it I couldn't find it to send it to her. I found it months later, folded neatly in my eBay items closet, and by that time Sue and I had talked several times and were friends. Now it is a few years later and I have visited Sue and Bill in Ohio a few times, and they have visited my family in PA a couple of times too. Here's the three of us at a kimono exhibit during my last visit with them in Ohio, last month.

I met NYT bestselling author John Robison on a writers site. At the time he hadn’t been published yet and no one had ever heard of him, other then brief mentions of him in the books of his brother, Augusten Burroughs. Indeed, I was a big Aug fan myself, and didn’t even realize John was his brother when I first connected with him online. All I knew was that he wrote about Asperger’s, which interests me as my brother is also Aspergian. John lives in Massachusetts near where I grew up as a child, and we have met for meals a couple of times when I or my family have gone there to visit childhood friends.

I met the fabulous writer Suzanne Finnamore online and then visited her at her beautiful home in California. We had a business deal that fell through, but shit happens, right? We still had a great time, and Suzanne read a little of my writing and gave me some helpful suggestions. The best lesson she taught me was “scene, scene, scene.” Create a scene with your writing, with no editorializing. Then create another scene. Like a good film, a good book can be a series of scenes. Now Suzanne will be moving with her sweet son to the east coast, and I’m hoping they’ll come up to PA to visit.

Doreen Orion is a psychiatrist and writer from Colorado who has also been supportive of my writing. She wrote the hilarious Queen of the Road, a true tale about her trip across America with her psychiatrist (and hottie, if I may say so myself) husband Tim. We met for dinner in Philadelphia and then saw our mutual friend, writer and psychiatrist Robin Altman, perform at a comedy club there. I’ve read Doreen’s book a few times and keep it handy for whenever I need a good laugh or desire a heartwarming ending. She’s a smarty and I can’t wait to read whatever she comes up with next.

I met A.S. King on a writers site and we became friends before realizing that of all the bizarre things, we happen to live just a couple of miles from each other in rural Pennsylvania. Amy has written several books and since I’ve known her she has sold The Dust of 100 Dogs, with many more to follow. Here we are together, at our local mall, where she recently had a book signing.

Here’s Ohio Amy and me in my living room the day she and I stalked Jon and Kate Gosselin. Amy from Ohio is lovely ~ young, smart, and grabbing the world by the short hairs. Her fiance’ is one lucky dude and he better know it. In this picture Amy and I are holding my sock monkey. Sock monkeys are a key possession for those who like to frequent the blog of Haven Kimmel, where Amy and I met online. (You see, we’re not weird. Two adult women holding a sock monkey really does make sense.)

The Internet has connected me, in the flesh, with some wonderful folks I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. On the surface, we don’t have much in common. John Robison is the only one of my friends who is my age, although Doreen comes close. The friends I've met online are as much as 19 years older than I am, and Kathy is about 25 years younger. The friends I’ve met through the Internet are Jewish, Chinese, young, old(er), rich, poor, and everything in between.

Thanks to the information superhighway, I am happy to be the one thing they have in common.