Originally appeared in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

REPRINT RIGHTS FOR SALE
(Click here for permission.)

Computers are often cited as one of the culprits in a world where people are becoming increasingly isolated and unsocial. Here's a story that goes the other way.

About three years ago, I began getting mail, in response to this column, from someone out between Prescott and River Falls, Wisconsin, who called herself "merfuff." Real name: Deb Enloe.

These messages were unfailingly eccentric, but very friendly. They also displayed a tendency to drop the "g" at the end of participles. I.e., gargling became, in merfuff's patois, garglin.' Nothing doing became nuthin' doin.' And so forth.

Merfuff has a style you'd call feisty, but only behind her back, because she's so … feisty. She uses the word "damty" in almost every sentence, meaning (I think) "darned." If a sentence of hers ends with only a single exclamation point, it's probably because someone died. Otherwise, life is lived two exclamations points at a time.

By contrast, I'm a language purist. It would take a state of emergency to get me to drop a "g" or use double exclamations. But hearing merfuff's cheerful e-chirping, my resistance quickly melted and we became cyberfriends. Cyberfriends are like regular friends, only you're not restricted by the way you look in the mirror. The communication is mind to mind. We have corresponded this way for three years now.

The thing that really brought us together was my dog Beauregard. A year ago I got a giant poodle puppy, and I needed a place to house him during our family vacation. He is a strange, flighty creature, and I fretted about his happiness. I visited a kennel or two, inspected the slabs, and was resigned to putting him on one when merfuff volunteered her home, out in the country. There was no mistaking her sincerity. So I drove my dog forty miles to meet her. Thus the cyberfriendship crossed over into actual reality.

When we reached her door, Beau bounded up to merfuff as if she were his long lost littermate, thrust his paws on her shoulders, and knocked her across the room and into her Laz-E-Boy. Merfuff, not the roughest, toughest person to begin with, has bad arthritis, and I dreaded what my dog would do to her in the name of play.

He wound up abusing her horribly, gnawing her precious San Francisco 49ers memorabilia, devouring a Jerry Rice action figure whole and leaving a scented offering before her shrine to Joe Montana. When the vacation was over, however, she vowed eternal love for the poodle, who reminded her of a poodle she used to love, and volunteered to do it again.

Merfuff is a writer, although underpublished one. She's trying to change that, working on a romance novel called Nigel's Adventures, contributing a column to a soap opera fanzine, and writing frequent listserve missives to the Thorsten Kaye Fan Club. When a bit of hers appeared in the Pioneer Press's Bulletin Board this spring, she did backflips. Figurative ones.

Thorsten Kaye is someone of whose existence I would be forever unaware, except for merfuff. He plays Patrick on the daytime drama One Life to Live, and merfuff has pictures of him taped up around her computer room. He is kind of a cross between Michael Bolton and Fabio, the sort of person I have been accustomed all my life to making fun of, on general principles. But now I'm thinking he must be an all right guy, because he's hip to the integrity of merfuff's myriad enthusiasms.

Once, when she asked me for a picture of myself to put up online, I pictured my mug alongside Thorsten Kaye's. Kind of like a before and after shot from a Charles Atlas ad, with me as the before. Or possibly as a Depends ad, with me as the after.

She corresponds with a friend Klaus in Germany, who also appreciates her unique bouquet of talents. It is embarrassing when Klaus and I talk in e-mail, knowing that while we may be men to the outer world, we are just a pair of pups in merfuff's kennel. I have not broached corresponding with Mr. Kaye, although you can visit him, if you wish, at http://www.gti.net/iksrog/thorsten.htm.

You can also see a picture of her other matinee idol, Beauregard, lying sphinxlike on her living room carpet at http://mfinley.com/beau.htm.

All this is prefatory to the news that merfuff is undergoing spinal surgery this week to relieve pressure caused by her arthritis. It's a big deal operation. If she doesn't have it, her doctors tell her, she faces paralysis. So she has been tearfully parting company with her e-pals, bracing for a difficult operation and, if she is lucky, months of recovery.

It is typical of her that, facing this challenge, one of her fears was that she would not be able to take care of Beauregard this July. Beau, whose mindless violence could not have been good for merfuff's spinal health.

If you're of a mind, and you want to cheer up someone who's probably having a worse week than you, drop Deb Enloe a line at merfuff@pressenter.com.

Here's hopin' she's doin' all right!!

America's Best-Loved Technology Writer(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.