Sunday morning, after a jovial night in Denver of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, fantastic conversation, and Rock Band for the Wii (turns out I’m a drummer at heart), I awoke in my friend Julie‘s comfy, cushy guest bed surrounded on three walls by photos of her wedding.

Also her past military service.

While Nate was raised an army brat, I’ve never had friends who had anything to do with weaponry (D&D doesn’t count) and shiny-buttoned uniforms and a resume with the word Pentagon on it. Military people are just not who you encounter living in white collar New York City, unless you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself in Times Square during Fleet week.

I always considered myself–as New Yorkers generally do—worldly and broad-minded simply because we live in a city with a decent Picasso collection, an Uzbeki cusine category in the Zagat guide, and a general populace who can use the word schlep in conversation without air quotes.

And yet ironically, it wasn’t living in the greatest city in the planet that lead me to the most mind-expanding social experience of my life, but turning on the AirPort on day in early 2006, logging onto blogspot.com, and saying why yes, I would like to create my free blog today!

Since starting Mom-101 three plus years ago, I am honored to have several friends besides Julie who’ve called military bases home. I can also now count among my friends women who actually come from Kansas (you mean people really live there?) women who are bona fide silicon valley techies, women who adopt special needs children and women who are scared to spend more than $4 on an article of clothing. I’ve got friends with 7 children and friends with cute southern accents and friends who say “eh,” just like everybody says the Canadians do. And yes, they really do. I’ve even got a friend who knows a thing or two about trailers and that’s not something you see in New York a whole lot.

Real friends make you homemade carmelized banana ice cream

How lucky we are.

How lucky we are to get the chance to know one another, and learn from people whose backgrounds are different than our own. How lucky we are to have a venue to bring us together over the values that unite us, the community we care about, the passions that fuel us regardless of where we live or what college we went to.

And how lucky we are to have the opportunity to hug one another in person at least once a year.

For all you people out there who hear about “online friends” and “blog friends” and internet friends” and think we’re all complete and total dorks?

Well, okay. We are.

But we’re happy dorks.