Incidentally, you’re also one of those who helped me venture out into the scary new world of “The Internets” when I was ready to poke my head out of the moderated Compuserve forums. You suggested some of those “Intarweb” sites and warned me about rec.arts.comics.* (but I went anyway). I got to know people via their postings and became friendly with them, enough to want to hang out in person with them in San Diego (places like the Hyatt bar or Steve and Elayne’s parties in the mid-90′s – the only time I met Rich Johnston, by the way). We even had dinner at that Top Gun BBQ place near the SD convention center that one year when you were one of the “Bitches in Black”. I’d still hang out and have a beer with you.

(Lea, yeah, one of those “how the world might have been different” choice moments. :) )

It’s tough, though. Tough like figuring out if that guy you’ve been hanging out with for three months now is your “boyfriend” or “just a friend who happens to be a boy.”

There are still some I call friends, and I hope they feel the same in return.

For others, I’ll use the term acquaintance, fellow, or peer. (and occasionally compatriot:) )

Great. Now I have to go scouring YouTube for brokerage commercials.

Oh, and one last thought on “friend”. If someone satisfies all the emotional requirements of being a friend – comfortable around them, always count on them, whatever – then having a physical requirement like “being in the same room” doesn’t make much sense. It’s like saying you can’t be “family” unless you share blood. If the commitment is there, it counts. Even if it doesn’t match what other people say it should be.

(Just making your blog into a hotbed of anti-Fundamentalist dogma, aren’t I? You are going to have such interesting Google placement for the next few weeks…)

(Another random historical tidbit: as an elementary schooler, I was part of the crowd in one of those EF Hutton commercials.)

“My Obsequious Lackey Dave”?

“My Reason for Being Dave”?

I think it is a fool’s quest to ever try to quantify the ineffable glory that is DAVE [*] with mere words. Like any Truth, it either resides within you, or it never will.

([*] – All capitals here, by way of “capital a ‘Art’”, since the familiar cognomen would already be capitalized. It represents the Platonic Ideal of Dave-nesss, rather than any singular mortal expression. We are all Dave, under the skin.)

On a less serious note, are people whose face you have seen automatically “friend” and not “acquaintence”? Would you share deep thoughts with someone you did not trust and respect, and except a reciprocal level of “friendship” in return?

Like you said, it’s a question of what you are comfortable with. But trying to say that there is one specific thing that will always tip the scales one way or the other in all situations seems foolish. (He said, knowing full well that he never calls anyone “friend” who he has not looked in the eye.) It is possible to be friends with someone you have never met, and live with someone all your life and never really be more than an acquaintence. And really, we all need all the friends we can get.

“My Broker is Dave, and Dave says…”