A blast from the past

The internet is good for so many things! Let's see how many we can think of. Well, there's the online banking, and the opportunity to buy varied and unnecessary luxury objects, like Maharishi trousers and Francis Francis espresso machines. Porn. Blogging. Oh, and e-mail, the great reuniter of friends long gone. The list goes on and on.

E-mail, I realised last night, also enables the Ghost of Friendships past to leap up and poke his pointy little finger in your eye when you are least expecting it. Case in point- I received a communique from a friend I used to work with many many moons ago. I have not seen or heard from him in at least 15 years. There is a reason for that- while a very nice individual, George, as we shall call him, used to bore me rigid by repeating the same stories over and over and over and over and over and over and shall I go on? So when I moved 6,000 miles away, we *ahem* sorta lost touch.

Anyway, he was sending out a preliminary cyber tap- you know, the equivalent of "are you still at this address, so that the follow up email doesn't go into the cyber void." And I figured that George must have acquired some new stories in the last 15 years, so it was probably safe to respond.

Well, George has a new story- or three, to be precise. He is the proud papa of triplets. Photos of the bouncing babies attached. They are adorable. All three. Did I mention there were three?

Now, I don't know if he and his wife are of the Uber-Fertiles category, or if they had, you know, help of the Geena Davis variety (c'mon Geena, we all know, don't we?) . I guess it's not the kind of thing you can really ask politely-and to be honest, it's none of my damn business.

However, considering I am pretty sure I am not pregnant, George's revival of friendships past at this particular juncture made me feel....well... mmm... not so great. Nice for him and all the rest of that. I just want one of my own. I'd settle, quite happily, for one.