Possum Philosophy: Bonds forged on the Web

By ROBERT CAHILL/Columnist

I have a friend. His name is Ken Brigham and among other things, he is a Vietnam War veteran. He is a former rock-‘n’-roll band member who plays both rock and religious music now. He is a lover of antique and classic automobiles (including Studebakers). He is a biker. He is also far more religious than I am. He lives in Oregon.
Actually, I have never laid eyes on him, other than in a few photos. But, thanks to the Internet, we have become good friends. Last Sunday Ken and his wife were out for a ride in the rural Oregon countryside. Unfortunately, to avoid hitting a vehicle that came along in the middle of the road, Ken laid his Harley down. His wife was banged up a bit but pretty much OK.
Ken wasn’t so lucky or maybe he was. He broke several ribs, punctured a lung, banged up his innards and damaged his liver. He was bleeding pretty badly internally. It took 45 minutes for an ambulance to get there. However, the first two people to come along after the wreck were doctors. The next was an RN. The fourth person on the scene was a medic just back from Iraq. He couldn’t have been much luckier if he had crashed through an Emergency Room door.
Ken asked a friend to make sure I knew he was hospitalized. The fellow actually posted a telephone number where I could call the hospital. I did, and for the first time in our friendship, spoke to Ken.
You may be wondering how did Ken and I met. Last Christmas, among the many gifts my darling wife got me was a Samsung digital camera. It is a powerful little machine in many ways. In the half-ton or so of papers, manuals, warranties, advertisements and assorted items that came with the camera was an invitation to join a photography site that holds ongoing competitions for photographers. It awards monthly honors, prizes, and such, and also allows one to display one’s photographs for other members to comment on and make suggestions. More than anything else, it is a social-networking site for photographers where they can view others’ photos, get ideas and even learn a little bit about their hobby.
Among his many other talents, Ken is an outstanding photographer. For some odd reason, he liked the stuff I posted. We began chatting back and forth through a message feature on the site, realized we had many things in common and became friends.
The Internet, the World Wide Web, the Information Superhighway, the ‘Net, the Web, whatever you may call it, it is a multi-sided coin, isn’t it? Some folks hate it, some love it, a few don’t have an opinion either way, and there may even be fewer still (a tiny number) who have no idea what I am talking about.
Me, well as aggravated as I may get sometimes, I’d still have to say put me in the love-it category. Besides, most of the time when I get really aggravated, it is because of some problem with the service provider, or lack of service, not the actual Internet itself. And, regardless how one looks at it, the Internet has changed much of life as we know it here in the United States.
Many of us get our news from the Web. I do, but I also get it from TV, radio, and the most important and thorough source (so what if I am just a tiny bit prejudiced), newspapers. We also shop online, although many of us, me included, worry about exchanging money this way. We even do a good bit of banking online. However, perhaps the most important thing we do is communicate with each other. We keep up with old friends and make new ones.
Think that is impossible? Believe me, it is not. Nearly 11 years ago now, I met someone through a mutual interest Web site. We started e-mailing back and forth. At first, I told this person that I lived in Virginia. She replied that she did too. I narrowed it down to southwestern Virginia and was surprised to learn she too lived here in the Southern Highlands. I went further and said I was from Saltville. To my surprise, she was from Abingdon. Over the next few months, we e-mailed back and forth, getting to know more about each other. We decided to meet.
She said she would prefer a public place. I agreed. As I told her later, I had seen the movie “Fatal Attraction,” and I certainly didn’t want to come home and find one of my cats cooking in a soup kettle. We met at a program on local history held one Sunday afternoon at the Glade Spring branch of the Washington County Library. After the program, we went out for dinner. One date led to another and now the poor dear is married to me. Yes, it was my wife, Terry. So it is possible. (And just in case anyone thinks we may have rushed into this thing, we were engaged for nearly 10 years before we wed.)
I know we all receive tons of e-mail we don’t want or need. Friends send us stale jokes, people try to scam our money, and ads are everywhere. But as this e-mail pointed out, what do we do when we really don’t have time to sit and write a friend a letter or make a long telephone call, but still want them to know we are thinking of them? Why, we send an e-mail of course, even if it is another stale joke.
Now, I still get aggravated at the junk e-mails. And I wish that fellow in Botswana would find someone else to help him get his $50 million (of which he will give me half) transferred to the U.S. But if I get e-mail from my friends, even the occasional stale jokes, I smile. At least they are thinking of me and remembering that we are friends.
Think about that next time you open your e-mail (and if you and that Botswanian get that deal done, I expect $1 million in consultant fees, OK?). And should you think about it, throw in a prayer for my friend Ken, as I told him, if he lived here in the South, we’d call him a “good ol’ boy.”

A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column appears in each Saturday edition.