Pen Pals

In 1996 every family across our country was infiltrated. We received endless CD's in the mail to launch a new internet program called America Online.  I was 13 and begged my parents to sign us up and they did!  It was an amazing new revolution called "the internet", especially for a young teenage girl such as me, who had strict rules and curfew. Now, I had ultimate freedom online, and I went straight for the teen Houston chat rooms. Since I loved music with an extreme passion, and played clarinet, I created my user name as Muzicbabe.  I began searching for other members who were in my age bracket, in Houston, and who enjoyed many of the same bands and hobbies as I did. I found several new friends always adding them to my "buddy list".  We all exchanged phone numbers and had group conversations, sometimes with up to ten people, creating phone parties, talking and laughing late into the night. Many of my "AOL buddies" and I exchanged mailing addresses. We sent each other pictures, letters and became pen pals.  As the years passed, though, I developed real life boyfriends, became active in after school activities, and excelled with my clarinet in wind ensemble, I strayed from the computer more and more.  I graduated high school, and the late night AOL friends simply vanished back into cyberspace, rarely ever thought of again.

Making A List...Checking It Twice

In the spirit of Christmas, this week’s “how we met” story is about a couple who share their love with others every day.

Steve and Oddny Gumaer are the co-founders of Partners Relief and Development. Partners Relief & Development is a registered charity in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States, working with communities impacted by war in Burma. Partners relief strives to provide free, full lives for the children and refugees of Burma.

Do you know the Alanis Morissette song, 21 things? It’s a guitar led and gritty song about all the things she wants in a lover. The point, however, is not the merits of this rock song, it is that I had a list like this too.

In 1989 I decided that living with Phil Anderson, even though we were best friends, was not cool anymore. We lived on the fourth floor of Hua Mark Condominiums, just across the street from Ramkamhaeng University in Bangkok. Phil had this habit of blowing his nose in the shower between yodeling and doing bird-calls;every morning…really. It drove me nuts. He was also a large he, not a lithe she. He liked to eat Turian. I describe Turian, the fruit many Asians refer to as “the king of fruits”, as a cross between decomposing garlic and dirty athletic socks with a suspiciously urine hue to it. How much better would it be to wake up with Meg Ryan next to me than waking up to Phil with his Turian breath and bird calls? So I started hunting for Meg.

Remember that at this time I was still dressing like a 50 year old, wearing aviator glasses (they weren’t cool back then), and dressing in either grey or baby blue button up shirt-sleeves. The exception of course was the very stylish madras cotton ones, colored like a rainbow, reserved for special occasions. I wasn’t exactly Meg Ryan material.

Darkest Before The Dawn

John and I met, in all places, in a nightclub.

A few days later over coffee, John told me of his situation: he was an asylum seeker in community detention with no working rights.

John had been forced to leave his home and family in Nigeria nearly four years earlier. Even though the civil war had ended, the unstable and volatile political situation continued to take thousands of lives and threaten the country’s stability. Several attempts had been made on John’s life and he finally had no choice but to flee, leaving behind everything he knew and loved: his career, his community, his family, and his future. He had his life, but had lost everything else. 

Zen and the Art....A Work In Progress

Frankly, this is not all that unique or, dare I say, Hollywood romantic.

In its basic elements we were both in our early thirties, both divorced, with the usual trappings that go with the status at the time.  In addition, Barb was what is now known a a single parent with two boys. We were brought together by a neighbor of mine who knew her from work.  We met...became a couple...and sort of decided one day (seven months later) that we should get married before taking off on a three week motorcycle tour of Western Canada and the US. The trip had been planned anyhow--probably the first honeymoon trip that was planned before there were even thoughts about getting married.
By way of background, those were the days when motorcycle touring was a bit of a rage for those in the Midwest.I, of course, took to it as a way of experiencing the world from a different perspective--an activity that drove my co-workers and parents crazy as they could not see how a corporate lawyer could ever be seen on a motorcycle.  Barb took to it because it was a way to see the world, and, I suppose, me.  It was a real low profile wedding--we both had been there before with the big church weddings and just did not feel the need again.  What we both had in common, I suppose, was a spirit of adventure--we were followers of William Least Heat Moon's book--"Blue Highways and I struggled with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Pirsig.