Cyber Friends, Like Meg

Being cyber friends is something new for me. I feel like Meg Ryan on You’ve Got Mail. Does anyone have a bouquet of sharpened pencils? And, although I already have the love of my life, I find myself occasionally sneaking onto the computer and wondering, “What will my friends have to say today?” If my line is empty, I keep checking back and waiting for my cyber friends to speak to me. Like Meg, sometimes I wonder if so much of my life is like a book or a movie—or, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

When I read good books, I also have the problem of their characters becoming a part of my life. I love it. I know it’s a good book when I wonder what the characters are doing—or how they’re getting along now that the story has ended. It makes me laugh. It’s almost like having a pretend friend like some children do when they’re young. Yet, I only know that some children do this when they’re little because I saw it on a movie—I never had a pretend friend, and neither did any of my kids.

Movies are so visual that it should make it easier to get involved in the characters’ lives. However, I think the movie people take the visual aspects for granted because so rarely do I see a movie that affects me the way a book can. Too often, the movie people get carried away with what they think we want to see or hear in their movie—sex—violence—and a never ending string of profanities, that they forget to add the emotional connection that makes a movie good.

None of the books I read are like that. So I have to say, yea to authors everywhere! Because even if I’ve never lived in England, and I was born way after the 1800’s (thank heaven), and although I don’t live in an alternate universe, I can almost always connect with the main characters in a novel—and my life is usually enriched because of the experience.