meet my oldest internet friend

I’m going to do this :D I have to!

after 4 years, i finally met my internet friend. my family was going on vacation that just so happened ot be 15 minutes from where she lived, so we picked her up and i got to hang out with her for a whole day. it was cool! i’m glad i did it!

I am a college freshman with a full and busy life and lots of good friends. But when I was barely 10 or 11 I changed schools and I was lonely a lot. I spent a lot of my time on this online journalling website; something like a precursor to myspace but it was more geared towards writing instead of exhibitioning yourself to strangers (nothing against myspace). I met a lot of people but one friend in particular I spoke to almost daily for years, who was my closest friend and confidant for much of my adolescence. We have talked about meeting and we have sworn to include the other in our weddings but we rarely talk anymore and its not uncommon for a year or so to go by with no contact. lately she contacted me to say that she was having a baby! She is coming to Florida where i will get to see her in person. She feels like a long lost friend though rather than someone I have never laid eyes on.

But I haven’t spoken to him for a long time and I want to keep in touch, so I think I will write him an e-mail.

Many “Internet” friends have come and gone but this one is here for good!

My oldest internet friend was Barry Christian, who I’d met through the Dubstar mailing list during my freshman year in college. We’d started communicating because he offered a trade of Dubstar’s first album Disgraceful (only release in the UK) for a copy of (Shirley Manson’s band) Angelfish. We started writing long emails almost daily, discussing mostly music though occasionally art, language, religion, etc. We made lots of CD exchanges since we both liked music so much. Barry worked in the Chemistry department at Sheffield Hallam University. He had a wife and 2 daughters, who were near my age. He was a very well read Anthropophosist (I probably mispelled that), a fan of Pink Floyd and Garbage, and a vegan. We still had plenty to talk about.

In 2002 (my last year of college), I won a trip to Europe from a UCLA Travel Fair that included a 7 day tour of London and Paris. A great part about it was that I’d already planned on going to England that summer. I have a couple cousins in London that I stayed with for the first few weeks of my trip. Since I was planning to go the Leeds Festival in Northern England, I decided to make a short stop in Sheffield to meet Barry. When I did get there, he met me at the train station and we stopped by his office at the university to drop off my stuff. Then we went to lunch at the faculty cafe. It was very nice, we both had some sort of tasty onion pie. After that, we rode the bus to a few local record stores. I picked up a Volume compilation CD and a special version of Beautiful Garbage for 5 pounds!

After that, I met his wife Christine who drove all three of us around Derbyshire to see the stone circles (which Barry had told me a lot about). It was a very nice drive through some lush green countryside. When we got out of the car, we hiked around to see the stone circles until Barry slipped and fell hard on his back. It was a very bad fall so we had to rush to an emergency room nearby. I was in the waiting room for quite awhile. After that we went to dinner at a pub, I think I had a steak mushroom dish with potatoes. Then, Barry and Christine took me to a bed and breakfast where I’d stay the night before going to Leeds. This story isn’t about Leeds so I’ll skip to the next part.

Barry and I continued to email each other after meeting, but then it stopped for a few months. I resent some of my emails to him, but got no reply. In late December 2002/early January 2003, I received a message from his daughter Heather (who I’d met when they picked me up from the B&B to bring to the train station the next morning). Heather said that her father had a lot of back trouble after his fall and after going to the hospital to get it checked out, they’d discovered that he had kidney cancer. He passed away in the hospital on December 26, 2002 (I think) at the too young age of 60. I thought I could take it pretty well, but I broke down a little. Barry was a good friend who always remembered my birthday and even my siblings’ birthdays. I’m sad that I couldn’t have met him again, or continued emailing him. Three years later, and I still remember meeting him and his family so vividly. He was the kind of friend you’d never forget.

My two oldest internet friends were Matt and Ryan, in that order. With Matt, there was an age gap, and when we had finally decided to meet in person we had already lost touch online. But it offered some closure to our relationship to hang out and see each other face-to-face.

With Ryan, as it has always been online, meeting him in person was like seeing an old, dear friend after years apart. Memories of that day are most cherished.

One of my oldest friends on the net was a gal in Pennsylvania whom I would spend hours upon hours chatting with in AOL chatrooms. We were close in age, but far apart in distance. We lost touch a few times, but we’d catch up with each other over our webpages from time to time. When I was living in NYC for a month, she came out to visit. We caught a movie, had lunch, and just hung out!

One of my oldest internet friends (by months…maybe even weeks) is someone Ive known since late ‘98. She passed through my local airport one day and had a long layover. I swooped and her friend up and had lunch. It was fun. Come to think of it, I met the other oldest friend too…he had a friend at my university so when he came up to have lunch with her two years ago, I joined them.

He goes by the pseudonym greyarea, and I’ve known him for about 13 years now. We’ve never met in person. I’m starting to get the impression that we’re never going to meet, especially since he lives half a world away at the moment. Doh! But he’s a cool guy, and someday we should.