Time for an unconventionally serious post. I’ve figured out why the world seems to get smaller. It’s not because of phones, or email, or overnight delivery, or the Internet, or any form of global communication or connectivity that you can imagine. As we grow up, our friends move away — first it’s college, then it’s a job or marriage, then who knows. Before you know it, all these people that you used to, at some point, spend at least part of every day with — and whose presence you may have taken for granted — are all over the globe. And the world feels smaller because we want it to, as we reach out to those friends whom we sometimes didn’t even realize would leave a hole until it had already happened. Phones and the Internet don’t make it a small world — they’re just a means to an end.

I’ll tell you right now, if you think this sounds sappy, I don’t care. I think it’s important to reflect on this kind of stuff every so often.

By the end of this week, friends of mine will have moved to Alabama and India, adding themselves to the list of those now in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Wisconsin, Texas, Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, Germany, North Carolina, Washington, New York, and no doubt many other places that I can’t keep track of. It’s almost hard to imagine that all of us were once in one place.

So here’s to Megan, Eric, Eric, Megan, Ann, Matt, Diane, Todd, Kelly, Laura, Lauren, Lauren, Emily, Dan, Dan, Ben, Adam, Melissa, Mike, and everyone else with whom I have been fortunate enough to, at one time or another, cross paths with and whom I no longer get to see very often, if ever. I just want to say, you guys are awesome and life wouldn’t be the same without you. Hope everything’s going well, whichever of these “corners” of the world you happen to be on.  Fokker Rogers out.