Divide

Despite all my pictures on Flickr, there is a large gap of my life that is without images. From the age of 10 to 35, almost no images of me exist - and those 25 years have a lot of memories. A lot of friends in different parts of the world. A lot of people would have called me a misfit during those years - even a freak at times. The long hair years, the short hair years, the 'go fast' years, the sleeping on the couch and floor years.

They were good years. I made so many good friends in those years, especially from 17 to 30. Some of them were swallowed whole by the digital divide - at times, a name will come to me and I'll search for them on the web, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. They're gone. Its almost as though they never existed. So when I read this article, it really hit home. Nowadays, most of my friends are a part of the digital circle to some degree. My mother, on fixed income, is in some of these circles and thrives in some of them like Flickr. But ol' Marc, my roommate and Arby's junkie? Gone like so many others.

They don't exist except in my memory. I don't expect them to be dead, mind you, but for all intents and purposes these people do not exist on the Internet. For all I know, they're working the same dead end jobs we were all fighting to avoid. They might be married now with little ones running around, and I daresay that I think a few of them may be behind bars. None of them were bad people, mind you, but some of us made bad choices (including me). Some bad choices just lead to other bad choices. Life goes on.

But on the web, they just don't exist. Meanwhile, my name is all over the place on the web, and it is a strange feeling. Maybe there is a feeling of guilt in that, in knowing so many people that just... aren't here yet. I know plenty of people who deserve to be here. In Orlando, there was a small group of us that were on a MUD together that had decided to have a website about our... inspired... conversations at the Green Table in the front lawn of the apartment, about Macs and why hydroponics might be the way of the future for growing food in Africa - the trouble, of course, was the water. This did not stop us from continuing research.

I suppose for every person I know on the Internet today, there is at least one that I know from my past that isn't on the Internet. As a human, my memory has a divide on the Internet.

But I'll whisper a secret to you. The best stories I have involve people that don't exist on the web yet and may never exist on the web. The 'A-Team'. The 'Yang-Yang'. The story of the Audi to be repossessed. The spontaneous combustion of a Volkswagon in the fire lane. The roadflare incident. The tripstick. HackeySack as a replacement for television. The dyed hair of boredom while a unit was on alert. The vomiting incident outside the biker bar. The air-shifting FZR 600 with the nude rider. The Hemicuda hitting the tracks at the end of California Crossing. And much, much more. The sour cream fight at the drive in window of Taco Bell in a baby turd green Gran Torino with a 351 Cleveland, and the police stop afterward that we talked our way out of. So many stories.

You just have no idea. And you may never have an idea. I won't forget... I wonder where they are a lot of the time. The answer I almost always get is this:

Not here.