Chatting

Mujeres
Originally uploaded by mrswonderful.

I hate that "chat" is now an internet term, meaning logging onto some kind of synchronous communication software, and typing. It's "talking" but it's not talking. It's typing, really. It's not email, it's not bulletin boards/forums, it's not a blog. It's *chat*.

Call me old-fashioned, but chat to me is this: sitting in a public place, maybe a restaurant, park, sidewalk and having a conversation. Face to face, interrupting, laughing, interacting at the human level. When I say, I had a great chat with my friend today over bagels, I do not mean that I sat at my desk and she sat at hers 20 miles away, and we typed, out of our heads, to each other.

No, I mean we set a time, drove to a public place, ordered a bagel, and just talked a blue streak about everything from cream cheese to world peace, with just enough time to eat the bagels and draw breath. AKA "heart-to-heart" as opposed to a typing session complete with multi-tasked windows, checking email, browsing for recipes for dinner and all that other jazz one ends up doing at the keyboard.

I love exchanging letters (emails) with friends. I love reading and writing blogs. And I like chat for the function that it serves, but it's not real live humans talking. (Or not talking.) Nothing replaces that, and nothing is quite as wonderful. When I tell "internet" friends that I wish we could get together and chat, I am seeing a comfy loungey place with art on the walls, coffee, soup, bagels, or a bench in a park, with dogs.

Long live the satirical aside, the sotto voce, the exclamation, the sincere response, the sympathetic head-tilt... long live face to face chatting.