Recently I’ve been thinking about relationships. Someone dropped a “like” on an older post, “Golden Oldies” as a matter of fact, and it reminded me that I had said the longest relationship I’ve had in my adult life (which itself is pretty damn long) has been with my little roadster. I’ve used that line a few times in blogs posts. I’ve used it a few times in speeches. It’s true you know. That has been my longest relationship outside of family, although now she’s more like family than some family.

Lots of relationships, even the short ones, can become more like family than some family. My partner at ROAMcare is more family than friend, and I can think of another 2 or 3 friends who fit in that category. Along the same line of thought, some acquaintances turn into friends when they really have no good reason to have done so.

I’m not sure where to put those we come across in the blogging world. The ones we connect with are more than just fellow bloggerets. Some we may have actually made our acquaintance with though I would think they are more than acquaintances. I’ve never met another from the blogging world although quite a few have made an impact on me.

In a post about a week ago I quoted Kurt Vonnegut. “We need gangs,” Vonnegut said, “I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.” The comments made it clear that here too is a gang. Perhaps that’s how we identify. As gang members.

One of the first of our gang I ran across was Bill Fyfe. Author. Correspondent. Canadian. We’d converse by email, an occasional postal correspondence, and by comments. Nice guy. Bill died a few years ago. His site, WD Fyfe is still active. Three or so years ago I was entered in a Toastmasters’ contest, and I needed a character for a narrative speech. So now in addition to his books and still active site, he is memorialized in a speech on YouTube.

Gang member? Acquaintance? Friend? Other? I don’t know what we are. All of us. There is something that somehow attracted us to each other. Of the 1600 or so” followers,” why is it that there is only a good handful I can call, if I were to call them anything, my gang member friends. That seems a good enough compromise.

In this week’s Uplift we tossed out the idea that one of our needs as fellow humans is to connect with other humans, often other humans who are nothing like us. Check out Opposites Attract and see if you don’t agree.