The Net - Simply Amazing

The Internet may be the single most incredible invention ever. Sure, this may not be huge news but what happened to me yesterday is pretty much proof of it.

For a long while I had avoided social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook. I thought they were silly, the pages (mostly tainted by MySpace) were ugly and poorly laid out. To me it was just silly. But then a friend invited me on MySpace and I found a bunch of friends I have not seen in a long while. Then another friend, one who has trouble not typing in all caps even, gets me over on Facebook and I am completely hooked now.

Here’s a rundown of what has happened to me in the past year or so because of these sites and the net. Keep in mind, this is someone who’s been on the full blown net since 1993 when you had to use things like “Trumpet Winsock” and things to connect and then load your browser, yada yada. Before that I was on Prodigy and I was on AOL way way way back when it first started. So this is nothing new, this is just something incredible now.

1. I found one friend I haven’t seen in about 12 years yet lived back in her old neighborhood and we’ve been out socializing numerous times since.
2. I found another friend I haven’t seen since junior year of high school who has a daughter and lives up in Antioch now but still had no idea where she was or what she was up to (or why the heck she didn’t finish at RLHS even!)
3. I went to the wedding of one of my great friends from high school who lives not far away but I had not heard from in a long time. At that wedding were many friends from high school including the guitarist in my high school rock band who I had not seen since my son (now 10) was an infant in a car carrier. At said wedding I saw another friend who just out of coincidence is a mutual friend of the bride and groom and I had not seen her in about 10 years or so either — she looked great, had a great husband and looked far happier than when I had last seen her.
4. I found the first true love of my life from my senior year in high school who I had not seen, talked to, had any idea where she was in 17 years. She’s incredibly successful, still incredibly beautiful and is leading an incredible life. We’ve had several phone conversations and text each other a few times a week to stay in touch.
5. Finally, the coup de grace from yesterday – I found the second love of my life from college who I have not seen or heard from other than some brief online contact a few years ago, I last saw her 14 years ago. She’s got two kids now and living in Seoul, South Korea of all places. Thanks to the magic of the internet I was singing an online performance last night and she got to listen to the whole thing.

We are flooded every day with the things that are wrong with the internet and that is certainly the case. Any tool, any powerful idea, can be used by those with less than ideal goals. But how it has enriched my life in the past few months has been nothing short of amazing. Thank you Al Gore!
😉