Small World

I love it when this big world of ours shrinks to fit, if only for a short time.

The guy who cleaned my gutters this morning was an old schoolmate of mine. Except for passing in the halls of our highschool, it had been nearly 40 years since I had seen Richard. I remembered a portly kid with glasses but, that was gradeschool. People do change. Looking at Facebook for my graduating class from HS, I recognize a lot of names but very few faces match up with those names, even the old faces. I looked Richard up before he came over but, he's not a member.

I would never have recognized him. He said the same about me. It was one of those "Cold Case" moments where people flash back to how others looked back in the day when they remember a person after so many years. I think "Sugar Sugar" by The Archies might have been playing... Hell, we're both 52 and, well, we got old. It's not a gripe, rather a fact of life.

We could pass on the street with no recognition or even talk in a line at the post office for several minutes and, unless the conversation turned to where one grew up or names were exchanged, we'd never know that we used to know each other. It's one thing to see people again at a reunion where your mind is set for signs of the past and present in people. When you are just out in the world, everyone seems like a stranger.

I had been thinking about this when I began to make "friends" on the internet. I was "conversing" with people that I was never likely to meet and had no idea of what they really look like. Very few people put their actual photo on their avatar whether it's for the practicality of anonymity or the fact that they just ain't very good looking. Most people like the mystery aspect of the net. You can be a hot chick or a studly dude and you can think that someone else is, as long as no pictures are involved. It works both ways. Generally, when I see a pretty face on an avatar, I can be very certain that it is NOT the poster. If they are that pretty, why are they on Topix ALL THE TIME? People who go on dating sites seem to always complain that the guy or girl "...looked NOTHING like their photo..." so, why should people be honest on Topix? Facebook is a bit different. That's usually someone you already know IRL. Of my Topix friends who were also on FB, two were as good looking as I suspected (but they had not claimed to be), one was (I think) falsely posting photo's of SOMEONE and one had a really nice personality...

The thing is, all these people whom I think I know and who think they know me, are as anonymous as Richard and I were until today. There are people on the net who hate me so much that they would like to kill me but, have never seen me before. We could pass on the street with no acknowledment whatsoever. We could talk in a bar and maybe have a pleasant conversation. We could work together and not even know each other's secret identities. I kinda like it that way. Aside from there being fewer attempts on my life, I like the mystery of not knowing what regular posters really look like. In my mind, one guy looks like Frank that I worked with in Memphis. I'm sure he doesn't actually look anything like Frank just like Teri probably doesn't look like George Lopez' mom (on the TV show) but, I can't help but picture these people in my mind when I read their posts. Even K, whose pictures are accurate- I still "see" her as the image of her I conjured up before we exchanged pictures. Mind you- it's not how I wanted her, or "Frank" or "Teri" to look, it's the image that was imprinted in my mind- for whatever inexplicable reason- based upon how they posted. I guess that since I was "talking" to people I couldn't see, I had to give these people a virtual face to accompany their posts, as if we were in actual conversation.

Seeing Richard after nearly 40 years was like this. We were both seeing the reality of who we are now but also "seeing" the kids that we used to be, back in the day when we actually had known each other. People on the net *think* that they know me. At times, I *think* I know them. But I don't and we don't and we likely never will. I've been judged by what I post and I have judged others as well. It's pretty much guess work just like characters in a novel. It shouldn't be taken seriously but it is and it's often taken for reality.

It was funny as Richard and I bid each other goodbye. He said: "Ferrerman, you still look like a young Brad Pitt!"

Most people say Hugh Jackman. That Richard was a goofy kid.