Virtual pizza
The meeting was set for an upscale pizza parlor not far from my home. I was there at the precise time, and it took me a bit of courage to make it there. This was going to be my first real life meet with ex-students from my school, a group that I met through the internet formed by people slightly my juniors. I didn't know anyone from the old times. I know a few from other places. Though I introduced myself as an older sister, I was welcomed heartily to the yahoo mail list. The funny thing is that the most active members of the list were not exactly best friends in school days either. They met again by chance less than one year ago and forged this virtual community, and from this informal reunion, new alliances sprung. Some of them meet at least once a week, and there is a party scheduled for a few weeks from now. I have been all for networking these days, so I jumped in at the chance of meeting new people.
The group I met yesterday is a curious portrait of my generation. All the girls are professionals. Among the four of us there had been 10 ex-husbands and several teen kids. I wonder why we, the collective we, were not able to keep those strings tied. There was a separated dad with his daughter who was playing with the designer's girl. They kept each other entertained the whole evening. Though none of us studied in the same class, we have plenty of common references. We were all scolded by the same principal. We skipped classes to go to the next door movie theater or roam around Sears. We share many common favorite hiding places in school, and had the same teachers.
Mark, one of the moderators of the list, had an analysis about the group which I thought it was interesting. He believes we are all undergoing some kind of midlife crisis. In the kind of society we live here, our ties and loyalties have been forced to shift very swiftly at times. Our community ties are loose. So we have been using other resources to create a safe, welcoming community for ourselves by looking back and trying to find people who belong to our past. It is a way to re-evaluate our lives. Though people from the "outside" look at the internet group as something weird or funny even, he believes that technology is just giving us a new chance to have some kind of next door neighbors, a virtual suburb, hidden behind screens in this huge, jungle like South American city.
1 Comments:
Livia, I think this is a lovely thought. I love the internet. I know there are weirdos and perverts out there (well, in my real life sometimes too), but the good far outweighs the bad.
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