One of the great privileges of our US trip was getting to spend time with old friends, including one I hadn’t met yet. I will confess that I was a little curious how Rudder and Melissa would get along since I don’t think they have a lot in common other than hailing from the same state. But it was a very nice evening. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet Morgan or Grove since they were off hanging out with other family, but on the plus side this meant Melissa was free for the whole evening, a bonus I didn’t expect.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet quite a number of people now that I first met online. What I usually find is that I get the luxury of a level of conversation then that I just don’t get to have in “real life”; IRL either the people I encounter don’t share too many of my interests or else we just don’t have time to have those long talks often. For example I get a lot of interesting viewpoints from Rebecca now on LJ that I didn’t often hear when we rowed together. You’re not supposed to talk in the boat. This is also why I so miss the Best Cubemate Ever, because sitting next to each other all day we did get to talk some (though we also shared the room with a whole bunch of uncongenial guys which limited things). The luxury of good conversation means more to me than ever, now that my life is so ruled by a language barrier; if it’s normally like a good pedicure, now an evening of what Jane Austen ould call “the best company” is a whole spa weekend. And it didn’t hurt that Asheville is a place I’ve been wanting to see for a while.
After Rudder and I got back from the Biltmore estate, Melissa met us at our hotel room (easy to find, lots of parking). We must not have looked like ax murderers (or I don’t write like one), because after a bit of discussion on what kind of food we all wanted, she took us in her car to a ‘new Southern’ restaurant — one with Southern roots but where the cook gets a bit creative. I forget what Melissa had. Rudder has a rib-eye steak that he said was OK; I think I came off best with a vegetarian tostada with a corncake and lots of other stuff on it. There was lots of lime flavoring and I asked them to add grilled shrimp around the edges. Mmm. We chewed over politics commiserated over the sad news from Doug, talked about families and kids and parenting and North Carolina and the local college and rowing and how our bodies change with time and stresses on them. We weren’t originally planning to go to Asheville, but I suggested it as a stop when I realized we had a whole extra day and night to play with. (Actually, we left Oak Ridge to head to Egret and T2’s place, and once on the road I suddenly realized we were supposed to get there a whole day later. Not quite sure how that happened! So it really was a last minute choice.) I’m even gladder that once I realized we’d be in the area I decided it was worth an email to see if Melissa might be available.
And this is getting long, so I’ll make the visit to Egret & co another entry.
You know, I’ve found that very very few in-person friends have been able to provide the level of good conversation that every single one of my online friends (that I’ve met so far) had with me instantly. The few exceptions in my in-the-flesh friends are those I’ve known for over a decade. I think a lot of this is familiarity–my online friends, we know a TON about each other from reading each others’ writing for years and years. In person, there are so many barriers to really getting to know someone else’s thoughts. “Small talk,” and people just don’t usually talk much about themselves. But in writing a journal for years, familiarity, sharing of thoughts, talking about one’s life… all of that comes naturally. (As a side note, both seeing you and going to another online friend’s wedding last fall really convinced me that I HAVE to get my new journal up and start writing again. I hate that I’ve left so many people out of my day to day for so long.)