Imagine, if you will, that there's a kid in your class who is never dirty, never impolite and never has the wrong answer. Then imagine him running up to the huge fence separating the two of you in the schoolyard and shouting, "I think you say inappropriate things and my mother doesn't like you either!" and then running away as fast as his little legs can carry him. You're not the neighbourhood bully, after all, so you retort, "--and upon what do you base your assumptions my good man?!" but he's just spent every last vestige of his outraged moral indignation on you and doesn't dare answer, and he knows you can't catch him. He's a coward but he's no fool. I recently experienced the blog/email equivalent of the above scenario and my puzzler's been getting a might sore over it. The problem for me is trying to sort the real from the virtual. In the real world he'd probably never tell me, but if he had, it would've been easy to straighten out the problem, patch up the misunderstanding, and move on. That's how we functional humans communicate.
One of the problems about writing a non-anonymous blog but trying in all honesty to be my sometimes acerbic, always opinionated, laugh-whore self is knowing where to draw the line. Learning where those borders lie is not my strongest suit, but I think I've managed to stay within boundaries so far, so mustn't start beating myself up over the kind of person who exists in every family; we indulge their preaching and lack of a sense of humour so they won't feel left out.
But in case I glossed over the differences between virtual and face-to-face communication, perhaps this little lesson will help:
http://gprime.net/video.php/reallifevsinternet
