Divine Secrets

"Keep your face to the sunshine
and you cannot see the shadow.
It's what sunflowers do."
by Helen Keller

Yeah, okay, this post isn't about Sunflowers.  Well not exactly anyway.  

I find myself astounded when I think about how far electronic communication has come.  Not so very long ago, well, maybe more like nearly 10 years ago, I found myself a member of an online community.  A bulletin board.  The sunflower is a clue, I wonder if anyone can guess the board that I was on?  This was before Facebook and MySpace was just taking off to give you a point of reference in time.  I haven't been involved in one since. In fact, I don't know of any that are in existence.  Of course I haven't looked because I definitely don't need something else to obsess about. But like I always do I'm getting ahead of myself.    

And as I do everything, I was fully immersed in this board and the other people on it.  This wasn't a pass time where I checked in every week or even every other day I was on obsessively.  Several times a day.  And there were different boards within the main board. One page was for light and fluffy topics, on page was for political topics, one was for good thoughts and prayer requests, and one was for recipes.  You get the idea.  

What was truly amazing in hindsight was the cliques that formed within the online community.  There were those who aligned themselves with like minded people politically, and those who aligned themselves with others who shared similiar hobbies and likes.  Naturally it didn't take long for the board to develop its bullies as well and there were some serious snark fests  about everything from homeschooling, breastfeeding, to asparagus and peas.  Go figure.  

I was pretty much insulated from that because I fell in with a group who liked to drink more than the others, party more than the others, and have sex more than the others.  So we created our own little corner of the board.  Our very own ongoing thread that detailed our various exploits.  In time we started setting up 3 way calls and planning trips to meet each other.  

You know how all the 'experts' advise not to go meet people in person that you think you 'know' online?  There's a reason for that.  We were quite the motley crew.  The Voodoo Krewe is what we called ourselves.  We were all lushes for that weekend.  We drank to much, we ate to much.  We talked to loudly and laughed more than should be allowed.  It wasn't until we all returned to our 'real lives' that the bottom fell out.  But that's enough for now.  Maybe tomorrow you'll get....The rest of the story.