We had no idea what he would look like. While we were safely sitting in the car, the rain poured on the gravel of the small parking place. Every now and then, a car would stop and an Englishman, or lady, would scurry for cover in the inviting dry and warm local inn.
We started theorizing.
"He organizes a folk festival, right? So surely he has a beard!"
"And long hair? No, he doesn't strike me as the hippie type."
It was easy enough for him. All he had to do was look for the one Dutch car with four tourists in it.
A casually clad man approached. Jeans, no beard or hippie hair. In a split second, the voice we had played with for five years materialized in front of our eyes. He was very real and currently in the process of getting soaked.
Will glanced at the sky. "Welcome to England!" he said with a shy smile.
Sitting at his kitchen table, he was soon called away to the festival grounds. Off he went, accompanied by a lot of "I'm so sorry for being such a terrible host!", "take anything your need from the fridge", "your beds have already been made", "don't forget to give me a call when you get to the festival and I'll fix you free tickets!"...
..."Oh and here are my home keys so you can come and leave as you please."
Online friends can be just as real as offline friends. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
The travels of Nora is a series about the adventures of Nora the gaming bear travelling abroad, investigating the thin veil between the online and offline world. This particular post is part of a set of eight gamers, meeting in various formations in England during the summer of 2015.
It was easy to recognise him, he wore a star wars t-shirt! It was fun to speculate about it though :D. I love your post!
ReplyDeleteOhhh, how could I have forgotten about the Star Wars t-shirt? Wasn't Conrad wearing his ewok shirt as well? I really don't remember these kind of details. Glad you liked the post!
DeleteYay, more Nora!
ReplyDeleteAnd I've been in that kind of situation. It is always interesting to see how we imagined the person to be compared to how they really look. Heck, some times even when you see photographs of them it can be a bit of a shock when we compare the real person with the one in our mind.
Also, seems like he was a much better host than he feared. :)
Yes! One of the things that impressed me the most was the hospitality of some of the people that I'd only met online before. Finding so much trust really cracked me up and made my summer holiday that much more special.
DeleteI love this:) I definitely plan on meeting some of my guildies from WoW in person someday. They're my friends...it doesn't matter that I've never met them in person, we've spent hours upon hours getting to know each other and they're some of my favorite people, that's all that matters to me!
ReplyDeleteYou should! So far almost all my meetings have been totally awesome. If anything, people I've met have become even more 'real' in my mind and I've gotten to know them better. All those events have been stored as cherished memories.
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