What is a friend?

By Mike Jastrzebski

Monday, Mary and I went to the Ft. Lauderdale boat show. To be honest, I wasn't overly impressed. Much of the show caters to the mega-yacht crowd, but we wandered around, added a few things to our dream list, and went off to meet a friend. Now this is where life becomes a little strange.

Victoria Allman, who blogs on this site a couple of days a month, and I have been friends since last March when I started Write on the Water(WOW), but we had never met. Christine Kling, another of our bloggers, introduced us through an e-mail.

Because we read each other's posts on the blog, we knew a lot about each other. I've got long-time friends who don't know things about me that Victoria does. But then, they don't read the blog. It was an interesting meeting. We chatted for well over an hour, I got to meet her husband and see where she works. This got me thinking, how many people do I consider to be friends that I've never met? Surprisingly, there are more than a few.

Tom Tripp, who also blogs on WOW is a nice guy. He has interesting things to say, writes clearly and cleverly, and I only know him through his picture and writings.

There are others, too. A couple of writers I've never met who I correspond with through Facebook on e-mails, and some readers who like my work and started writing back and forth with me. Then there are the friends that I've met while boating that I may never see again, but we keep in touch by e-mail.

I guess in the past these friends would have been considered pen pals. Hand written letters are more personal by nature, but with Facebook and blogs and websites and e-mail I get to follow the lives of these friends as if they lived next door and I was watching them through the kitchen window.

I feel as if the whole concept of friendship has changed. This isn't a complaint, just an observation. I kind of like the whole idea of making friends this way. What do you think?