My buddy Monte and I met up one Friday night looking for something to do. The island we were on was lush, tropical, and peaceful, but we needed something more exciting to do.

So off we went, magically teleported in seconds to a pub in a far off place that could very well have been Ireland. Milling around outside were all sorts of intriguing and bizarre characters: a three foot tall person in leopard print underwear smoking a cigar; a large man dressed in black with a flowing cape; a bi-ped fox-man in tennis shoes; a couple gals who appeared to have been dwelling on a nefarious street corner (if you get my drift); and someone who had chosen to be a unicorn the size of a pygmy goat. Yes, yes indeed. This was the place for us! Anything can happen in Second Life....the online virtual world that dazzles the imagination.

I'm not much of a dancer. In fact, at my wedding, it was all my poor wife could do to get me to participate in the traditional 'first dance together' ritual of ridicule. I tried to get her to dance with her dad, my best man, the caterers....but no, it had to be me since I was the newly ordained husband and all. I simply cannot let go of enough inhibitions to dance without a crippling level of embarrassment, so I avoid it at all costs. My Second Life avatar, however, is a dancing fool. Once I moved past my real life disdain of dancing and convinced myself that my avatar is not real, I forced him onto the dance floor, pushed the dance button, and off he went twisting, flailing, gyrating, and whirling like a dervish. After all, once he became animated, I had no control over his dizzying moves so it wasn't like any embarrassment could come from my own lack of grace and coordination. Aside from avoiding the man on fire and the lad with dragon wings, this was actually fun and I was amazed that I was there enjoying an activity that I would never willingly experience in real life. I know, I know.....some of you are reading this thinking, "what a geek" or "he should enjoy his real life and not be preoccupied with a fake life in a fake world". It's a diversion, folks. Kind of like TV. I don't shun my family in favor of Second Life, and I have never missed work because of it (yet).

Certainly the things I've witnessed and experienced in Second Life are bizarre, frivolous, intriguing, and occasionally even a complete waste of time. But there is another side of SL that makes it incredible. It is a way to communicate. You see, Monte lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. We grew up together back in Indiana, from childhood until after high school and then we went our geographic separate ways. It's no wonder that we email or Google Chat with each other almost daily to stay current on family happenings and long distance water cooler conversation. Second Life adds an entirely new element to staying in touch. Within SL, we can meet virtually anywhere, pull up a couple chairs, and type messages back & forth for hours face to face (well, sort of). But even though we are typing messages, there is a very real perception that we are sitting in the same room talking because there is a visual representation of ourselves on the computer screen. Neither of our avatars resembles our real life appearances, but the mind begins to perceive the scene as something that is actually occurring with people who are actually involved in it.

If nothing else, Second Life is a fantastic psychological and sociological fishbowl. At first glance, it seems like a game (though never refer to it as a game to another Second Lifer). But once accustomed to it, it begins to seem very lifelike and very real. After a few hours of learning how to navigate, I began to see other avatars and I noticed how they looked. It seemed like everyone fell into two camps: the beautiful/perfect or the freaky/bizarre. People either see themselves as a certain character, or wish they could be the character they have created. I began to be obsessed with what I was wearing - the default choices for clothing were no longer cool or acceptable. To fit in, I had to go find clothes for my avatar. The quest for just the right shirt took a total of about 6 or 8 hours over several days. And then, I could no longer live with the cartoon-like hair that came with my avatar. I began the quest to go find and purchase "flexi" hair, or hair with texture and that moves with the body. But why? Why did I care? What difference does it make that a fake person has a certain type of hair and a certain wardrobe?

I suppose the answer, in part, lies in the real world. It is the same in our real lives. As long as we are social creatures, we each have some sort of image, some sort of perception of ourselves that we feel we must display to others. In SL as in RL, as long as there are other people, it is human nature to represent ourselves in whatever whacked-out, strange, classy, handsome, beautiful, or frightening manner we choose.

Which is exactly why Monte and I found ourselves in a Second Life pub. There, two distant, life-long friends can meet on occasion and be the fools we once were. We can be whomever we desire, we can jump into a pool of sharks without fear, and we don't particularly care that a giant winged toad is dancing in the air next to the red-eyed Barbie angel with knives for hands.