A Strange Friendship

“Ugh, the internet is so slow over here,” I complained.

I was sitting at one of the computers in the lounge over at the Bosque Del Apache.

My sister was sitting at the out-of-tune piano in the corner, picking out the melody to the song Resistance, and my friend Gwen was writing out a new role play thread, on our Elvish role-playing site, on her ipad.

She started laughing: “This new user is so ridiculous. I can't believe he just suggested making up a religion for the elves, and he also messaged me to ask if he could add some of his elvish words to our lexicon.”

“He hasn't even done any role-playing yet,” I added, “And he already wants to make all these changes. He already asked me to make a band of human warriors in Senium, which I made.”

I clicked on the page I had made, and then let out a groan. He had added a whole bunch of script to the page I had made without asking. And not only that, he hadn't color coded it to match the rest of the text on the page, and it was full of run-on sentences. I breathed in and out, seething.

“Look at what he did, Gwen,” I exclaimed. “He can't just change pages any old way he wants to.”

“He's so irritating,” she agreed. “We need to change our settings, so that only moderators can make changes to pages. And give him a warning. He can't get away with that.”

Several seconds later I heard her start raging: “He just said the banner we made is fucking awful. The rules very clearly state that curse words are prohibited!”

I couldn't help myself. Even though I was seething over him adding to the page I had made, I started giggling. It was too hilarious. He was so stupid. I could not understand how anyone could be so oblivious.

“I'm sending him a message right now,” I said.

Gwen was still too busy raging and shouting out insults over him to pay attention.

I slowly typed, “Please do not change my pages again without permission. It is against the rules. It is also against the rules to use curse words on this site.”

I looked at what I had written, and then added a smiley face for good measure: “Please do not change my pages again without permission. :) It is against the rules. It is also against the rules to use curse words on this site.”

Then I hit send. A few minutes later I received a response from him: “Oh I didn't bother reading the rules. Sorry about that.”

I groaned into my hands. He intrigued me. I wanted to understand him, so I started writing him messages asking about himself, and then I sent him an enneagram test. He tested at type eight, the challenger. Surely all made sense now. Eights wanted control and didn't like following rules.

A few days later, a compliment popped up onto my profile page from him: “Hey, I think you're super!
no idea why they don't just have a type your own option on this but, hey, doesn't make much difference so basically; you rock, and i wish you luck in your endeavors.”

Gwen laughed and laughed until she almost died. But secretly I was pleased. Everything about him was intriguing. Not that I could admit to liking him. Everyone would laugh at me.

And then he went on vacation for two weeks, and I spent the entire time moping around, thinking he would never come back. I shouldn't care I told myself sternly. He's just some random person on the internet. Why should you care? But he had already taken a hold of my brain. I missed him, and I never missed anybody.

When he came back, I took the first chance I had and said, “I think I'm falling for you.”

He responded with, “I think that is the nicest thing anyone has ever typed to me. I'm sure you'll be glad to know I just got out of a relationship.”

And so began a long friendship with a guy that I only fell deeper in love with over time. 

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~ Henry David Thoreau