A WHOLE NEW WORLD
“She was not old!” she repeated the words to herself as she looked at the
image in the mirror.
“She was not old!” Sure some things about her were not ‘younger than
springtime’ and parts of her body had ‘migrated south’ with age, but she was
not old.
In her life she had gone through many things; love, marriage, divorce. Always
she had tried to hold back the years, but now she was just content to just
be herself.
As Jane Broody went put it, she was “in her prime”.
She could still turn a few heads, though these days the heads were normally
older and with grey hair. Her figure was now build more for comfort, but her
teeth and her hair were still her own. Also thanks to modern medicine and
her daily tablet, she still had the desires and needs of a woman.
She went to clubs, but they were full of women, who like so many predators
lay in wait for any single man. Then her daughter gave her a computer and
with that a whole new world opened up to her.
Gradually she began to learn how to use the computer and find her way around
the internet. One day she was introduced to a chat room for the over
fifties, and with that a whole new life started. She found people like
herself, lonely, lost, looking for friendship, just happy to talk to other
people. She could not believe the friendship she found, the understanding
and from so many places around the globe. She soon learned like at her clubs
to spot the predators, and avoid the obvious pit falls.
She found herself more and more drawn into the world of the internet and the
friendships she found there. She loved the banter, the quiz nights and being
part of her chat room.
One day she was chatting with some of her friends as normal, when she felt a
sudden pain in her chest and the whole world went dark.
Slowly her eyes opened and focused. She found herself in a strange room; the
apparatus that surrounded her could only mean the room was part of a
hospital. She looked at the blinking lights on the display next to her, the
cables attached to her body. What had happened, one moment she had been
talking to her friends, the next she had woken up in hospital?
A nurse came and stood next to her, “Hi, back with us are you?” she asked,
taking her hand to check her pulse. “You’re alright; you’ve just had a
slight heart tremor, which caused you to black out. But you’ll be fine.”
“But…” she struggled to speak, her mouth dry. “But, how did I get here?”
The nurse smiled. “You have to thank your internet friends for that. They
were worried about you when you suddenly disappeared offline. I think a
coupe of them had your phone number, and tried to call you. When they got no
reply, they contacted the local police and well… here you are. “
She could not believe her friends from the chartroom, could have saved her,
but they had. Nobody would have found her for several days if they had not
acted.
“Now,” the nurse continued, “if you’re feeling better, you have a visitor.”
She could not think who it might be, but nodded her head to the nurse.
A man slowly entered the room, about her age, a slightly crushed bunch of
flowers grasped in one hand.
“Hi,” he said “how are you feeling?”
“I’m …sorry….” She began to answer.
“Oh…” he said looking slightly embarrassed. “I’m George… I mean Blue Leader
as you know me in the chat room, I found I lived quite near you so thought
I’d come and visit you.”
George? Now she understood, they had been chatting when she had blacked out.
She had known George for a while, he had once asked if they could meet, but
warnings from others about such meetings had put her guard up to such a
request.
“Hi George, I no you wanted to meet me, but this is not exactly the place I
would have chosen.”
George laughed, and pulled up a chair next to the bed. “Well,” he said “at
least we’ve chosen a place where there are plenty of other people around.”
As they two of them talked and joked, something inside her told her, that
this was the start of something more than just an internet friendship.
Barry Eva 2006
YOU ARE THE
PERSON TO
VISIT OUR SITE
PLEASE BE SO KIND AS TO SIGN OUR GUEST BOOK
THANK YOU
