Oh the joys of dodging the "how do you know each other" question.... As someone who is totally closeted, it's something I have a lot practice in. Sarah was the first folc I met and we were both wary of telling people how we met. So we told people that we met through a mutual friend at a party right before I moved to NC, so that was why most of our friendship was developed online. This lie actually worked really well - my friends all still believe this - but I don't think her parents bought it for long. After awhile, they would make comments like, "Well, when you guys met online..." We'd just look at each other trying to figure out if it was a trap.
My friends know or at least know a lot about Sarah, Tracey, Pam and Kathy, so when all else fails, and someone asks who I know a folc, I just say, "Oh, they're a friend of ...."
The best though was this summer when Sarah, Tracey, Kaylle, LauraU, Bethy, Jill and I all went to the beach together. We were sitting around one day when these two guys approached and talked to us for awhile. They seemed really nice and we had a great time talking to them for awhile, until the dreaded "so, how do y'all know each other?". After a long, uncomfortable silence, Tracey says, "Well, we all went to college." True - note the artful dodging of the lie. She didn't claim we went there together. <G> "Oh great," the guy replied. "Where did y'all go." Yet another long pause. Then, "Well...we all transfered a lot." The guy looked at us like we were absolutely nuts and let it drop. They probably still talk about those weird girls they met at the beach and wonder how we really met. <G>
As for the googling thing, that's exactly why I don't use my full name for fanfic. I don't want someone stumbling across it. I'm not secretive at all about my identity - tons of folcs know my full name, address, phone number, etc - but I don't want my full name on stories. Same for email. For a long time I had my primary email as the address on my stories both on the boards and on the archives, but then I realized that it's just as easy to google someone's email address as their name (in fact, it's a trick I use a lot) so I created a secondary yahoo account. I figure that's enough steps that no one is going to find it by accident. If anyone looks hard enough to find it, they deserve to know. <G>
Annie
