Ted Danson's Grey Hair

When they first meet they talk with seeing, without hearing. They talk through machines; paper cups attached to each other with string, tangled electrical wires plugged into computers, giving off light in the darkness

Mike is sitting in the office of his small terraced house, staring at the comforting glow of the screen. Plugged in. Terraced. The opposite of detached. Perhaps, but in many ways it doesn't really make a difference either way. It is 1am. Mike cannot sleep. Mike hasn't slept much since his divorce.

Mike married in 1982, and his love faded while Ted Danson's hair greyed. The years between 1982 and 1983 were spent in many places, but never Boston. There were fights, though nothing exciting, and people, both ordinary and extraordinary, and both. Now Mike watches old episodes of "cheers" while he eats his dinner, remembering the time when things were happier, and sofas were made for two, after dinner, not one, with a tv dinner.

And these days Ted Danson wears his grey hair like something to be proud of, while Mike hides away indoors.

So there is this, a flickering screen, a triumph of technology, a danger to traditional communication, an opportunity, a portal, a way of being something, someone else. And the restless can sleep easy in shadow dreams of machines and the faceless who run around inside the world which isn't a world can twist their features into something more attractive, and isn't that an opportunity. Mike uploads a picture of himself which is twenty years old and he waits, and waits.

One person, one room, one internet connection.

I want to go where everybody knows my name.