And I live in a small town.

Do you know what I love about the internet? Besides shopping and reading celebrity smut?

Although obvious to those who know me (e.g. most of the people reading this), I moved around a lot as a child. Every two and a half years or so, my father would take a new contract as a consultant in some far flung corner of the world and we would pack off and head into a new adventure. Being a nomad had its advantages, but leaving behind friends without a real means to keep in touch with them was painful and a difficult way to grow up.

Enter the Web.

I’ve been online for close to 15 years, but have only in the last year or two begun to take advantage of the myriad of social networking tools now available. I started off with Friendster, then moved to MySpace and now maintain profiles on both MySpace and Facebook (along with a more professional persona for LinkedIn).

What’s amazing is that I finally get to have the experience I always wanted as a little kid: all of my friends are in one place, a virtual hometown if you will. I can catch up with the guys who put my sofa on the fraternity house volleyball court, talk to people who suffered through my laughable love for Laura Ashley dresses or remember when I wrote quotes from “The Three Amigos” on my Reebok high tops. In the last week, I heard from a woman who was of my dearest pals from middle school and, today, another who was my best friend in the second grade. And the Web even equalizes location: the middle school pal is in Pakistan; the elementary school one likely is someplace in Europe (Britain or Norway). And all of this is to say nothing of reconnecting with family, cousins who I'd lost touch with along the way.

God bless the Web.