Can Wednesday be friends day?

OK, I have no idea what friends day might be, except maybe a day to get back in touch with friends.

And true enough, there are any number of people I would call my friends who I haven't corresponded with in quite a long time. Back in the day, I used to write letters to my best friends wherever they were, long rambling accounts of everything going on in my life at the time. And some people would write me back.

Nowadays, Facebook and Email and so forth make it possible for me to expend a minimal amount of energy and make a connection, however superficial, with friends far and wide.

Of course, the definition of what constitutes a friend has changed, however slightly. Instead of having to wait until I encounter someone in the flesh to do the usual things one does to establish a friendship - meet, talk, establish common ground, share a common experience - now with Facebook I call someone a friend right after I have established from looking at their profile that we may have some common ground.

And as Therese reminded me the other day, you really don't know people just from trading quips with them on Facebook. I agree with that statement, but with a qualification. My qualification being that the relationship you establish with someone in cyberspace is a real relationship; but it is not the same thing as having a face-to-face relationship.

I can remember when I was using Match.com to date, having numerous experiences of there being a disconnect between the cyber relationship and the face-to-face. In exchanging a handful of emails, I would get the sense that I had a great rapport with a lady, but after spending no more than two minutes in the actual presence of this same person, I was bored or uncomfortable and had no expectation that spending more time in their presence was going to change that first impression.

I guess part of it is the time factor. Maybe it's easier to be suave or witty or sound interesting when you have the time to compose an email that makes you seem that way. Even in a chatroom, you have the chance to proofread your contribution to a conversation before you hit "send." But in the actual presence of a real-life person, you have to think on your feet. All the details of what the person likes to eat and where they've travelled and who their favorite movie actor is escape you, and you have to make things up as you go along, and lots of people in this day and age of texting and Tweeting do not have that ability.

I guess there's no real way of bridging that very real distant between me and someone at another computer somewhere else in the world, and remaining in cyberspace. As much as we love our tools, in order to establish a real lasting friendship, the laptop and the Blackberry/iPhone have to be put aside. That is of course assuming that we want a real lasting friendship. Personally, when I have the chance, I will jump at it to put a face and personality to the person I've met in cyberspace.

For example, I have travelled to Washington DC, Chicago, Florida and Nebraska to meet people I had befriended on cigar boards. And I haven't been disappointed in any of those cases. Which is not to say that I am going to hop back on a plane or train and visit all of those people again. It is true that some people, some friends, are more interesting and friendly from a distance. And that's cool too.