When I was a kid, there was a corny corny song we sang at Girl Scouts or summer camp that went in a round like this:

"Make new friends and keep the old
One is silver and the other gold."

A very short round, it's worth noting.

It seems like a great summer camp song, as those of us who returned to camp every year had old friends and always met new ones.

As an adult, I've made friends mostly through the worlds I inhabit of science fiction and mystery fandom. I've had conversations from time to time with friends about how you find friends as an adult. Many - must, it seems - find friends through work, or church or their children's activities. The convention world, and like it the fanzine world brings people like me in touch with other people like me. But it is harder to find new friends as we age, isn't it? Not that we probably need to. I've found fabulous community in genre fandom, and have found friends in other places, from volunteer gigs to folks I see often at a coffeeshop and we finally say "hi."

But once in a huge great while, the opportunity just sneaks through and you get to meet someone knew. In the case at hand, it was thanks to yes-I-know-it's-very-annoying-at-times Facebook. I think I typed in this person's name just in case...and poof, there she was.

A few years back (I've probably told this story endless times, so forgive me) I was working on program for Left Coast Crime in Monterey and while helping to send out emails to program folks i saw a name and I blinked. The name was unique and I knew it because it was on my very very short list of "actresses I really want to meet some day because they knocked my socks off in a movie". The list was two people long and i had just seen one of the names. So I looked and holysmokes, her first mystery was due out. So I sent her an email - very unprofessional (oh pooh, it's a volunteer job) (but no really) - that was probably just a teensy bit of a huge fangirl gush about "ohmigods is it really you?" We met a few months later at LCC and ohmigods it really was and Harley and I have been friends to that day. Anyone who knows Harley Jane Kozak will be shocked, shocked I say because she's so hard to get to know. (Pause here for snickering amongst the crowd.) (The movie was "Parenthood". I thought she stole it from everyone else and that was a big deal, big cast movie but she just got my attention.)

So the list was now down to one and well, there she was on Facebook so I wrote and did it again, all fangirl ohmygods, it's you, I love your work (all true and I know her work) and she didn't tell me to go away or file a restraining order or block me or report me or nuttin'. And we've kept up a bit on Facebook but not a lot. Except I saw a post from her that said she was in Seattle. And this morning I got to sit down and have coffee and talk with the OTHER person on that list, Lisa Jane Persky, whom I have wanted to meet since seeing her steal every scene in "The Big Easy" that she was in, not an easy job. She just had it. I wanted to know her.

And that was the best damn two hours I've gotten to spend in a long time. It was silver or gold. It doesn't matter which.