Dec. 5: A friend I have never met

 Facebook is full of friends I have never met before.

I am a magician and I'm willing to bet that at least 100 of my Facebook friends are also magicians. I estimate I've met maybe 20 per cent of them. Most of them I haven't even spoken with on the phone. Our friendships are limited to the odd online interaction and my living vicariously through them as they fool Penn & Teller.

I am also a writer. A long time ago, when the Internet was still in its infancy, I was a part of a usenet group called alt.fiction.original, which was an online community that would post and critique stories. Carla Rene was a member. So was Alaric McDermott and Bob Westermeyer. I've never met any of them in person but I've spoken to a couple of them on the phone before. We all come from different walks of life but we bond over our love of storytelling.

Facebook is also home to people I met more than three decades ago and whom I haven't seen since. Yep, high school graduation is now 30 years in the rear view. Should I ever see any of them on the street, I'm sure we'd have a great conversation. We're all members of an august club - people who graduated from Bishop Grandin High School in 1991.

And I have believer friends too. Roger Sharp, Tremper Longman, Hendrik van Der Bergen. Never met 'em but they all love the Lord and somehow, they found their way on to my friends' list.

There are even people I'm friends with because they have the same surname as me. They live all over the place (though most of 'em live in England) but we're friends because you know we're all family. You might have to go a dozen generations back to find the common ancestor, but I'm convinced we're all related somehow.

Yes, and when I go to a hockey game, especially on the road, I can meet a whole bunch of friends who are fellow Calgary Flames fans. 

The same is true for football. When I go to a Saskatchewan Roughriders road game, I always bond with anyone wearing green and white. There are conversations that go like this:

"Are you from Saskatchewan?"

"Sure am."

"Whereabouts?"

"Born in Saskatoon."

"I'm from Rosetown."

"Really? Wow, I graduated from high school in Rosetown way back in 1968."

"That's the year my mom graduated."

"What's your mom's name."

<I tell her my mom's name.>

"Wow! I know her."

"Let's take a selfie."



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