When I was going into my sophomore year, my friend Seamus (one year my senior) introduced me to his friend Grace online. At the time, Grace was just entering into her freshman year of high school. I'm still uncertain how Seamus and she met; I believe it was through an online video game, the details of which seemed sketchy and I never bothered to clarify. Either way, Seamus had for some time been addressing her as his wife and describing how cool she was. Even though he'd never met her in person. I agreed with his assessment; Grace was just as interesting and exciting a person as he described, and we quickly became friends. However, neither Seamus nor I had ever met her in person.
By chance, Grace happened to live in New Hampshire, an hour and half drive away in a small town called Milford. She was into drama; as were Seamus and I. So we decided that June to go and see one of her plays, at the same time meeting this person with whom we'd only spoken online for so long for the first time. We navigated our way via GPS, and wound up at her tiny high school. The performance was Guys and Dolls. We accidentally ran into her in the hallway before the show; she was excited, we came off as frightened for not expecting to see her. We saw the play, and hung out afterwards, both excited to be seeing each other in person for the first time, and quietly trying to bridge the divide inside ourselves between our online and actual identities.