New Thing #49: I talked to Bonnie on the phone.

(If anyone knows anything about DSL and why my DSL hates me, please throw me a bone? Seriously. I need help. Help me.)

(My DSL decides to stop recognizing my computer every five minutes or so, so I'm always being thrown off of the internet and then having to reconnect all the time. It's super annoying. It only happens when I'm at home--whenever I'm anywhere else using wireless, my internet connection is brilliant.)

(I just wrote this blog entry and added, like, thirty links to it, and then my DSL booted me and the entire post was gone, baby, gone.) (So now I'm starting over and I hope it'll be as good as it was the first time.) (No, scrap that. I hope it'll be better than it was!) (No, scrap that too. I don't just "hope" it'll be better. That's wishy washy. That's milktoast. I'm just gonna fucking make it better.) (Hells yeah, the post I had been writing for the last hour was hogwash compared to the brilliance that's gonna spark outta my fingertips the second time out of the gate.) (This time!) (Now!) (Here goes.)

(Fuck yeah.)

(Okay, now I feel like I've set myself up for failure.) (I may not get a book deal out of this post or anything like that, but that's fine because it's my favorite New Thing I've done in a long while and, well, okay, sorry, wait, no more talking about it, I'm just gonna go ahead and rewrite the fucking post already.)

*

So if you read my comments, you know that I have embarked on a (totally non-sexual, more of a mutual-admiration-society type) cyber love affair with a woman named Bonnie. She's my NBFF. ("New Best Friend Forever," for those of you not hep to the lingo.)

Bonnie and I met via blogland. (Bonnie was actually introduced to my blog by Colleen, or communicatrix as she's known in the blogosphere, so thank you Colleen for igniting our love fest) (Bonnie's pet name for Colleen is Coco, but my actual pet for fifteen years was named Coco and so I can't call Colleen "Coco" because then I might run the risk of having too many Cocos on my blog and people might be like, "wait, is he talking about his dear departed miniature dachshund or is he talking about the communicatrix?" And I don't want that to happen.) Well, anyway, the other night Bonnie and I talked on the phone for the first time.

Hello? New Thing much? Exactly.

Bonnie is the first person I've ever "met" via my blog in which the relationship has progressed from "I'm reading their words on the screen" to "Holly cow! I'm actually hearing their voice on the telephone!"

It was definitely a New Thing. It was New Thing #49.

It was surreal because we both knew so much about each other, but we didn't know one incredibly basic thing: what the other person's voice sounded like.

Which is weird, if you think about it. Weird in a really cool kinda way. It was like, okay, um, it was like this: imagine if you were suddenly on the telephone with one of your favorite literary characters. This person who you've spent hours and hours getting to know and falling in love with is suddenly *bang* *boom!* alive.

That would be kinda weird, right? But amazing at the same time.

Talking to Bonnie was like...
It was like talking to Owen Meany.
Like talking to Peter Pan.
Like talking to Sookie Stackhouse.
Like talking to Arturo the Aqua Boy.
Like talking to Amelia Bedelia.

These fictional characters are some of my favorite people and I think that if I met any of them in real life, my head might explode.

But while I was talking to Bonnie on the phone, I felt like I could have been talking to one of these fictional characters come to life. That's how fantastical it was. (When we meet in person, which is an upcoming New Thing I'm looking forward to, hopefully my head won't actually explode.)

It was like we were both so freaking freaked out that we were actually talking to each other and actually hearing each others voices that we didn't actually do that much talking. We mostly just giggled and screamed things like "I can't believe we're actually talking to each other!"

It was, like, hella cool.