A Love Letter to Skype

None of my good friends live anywhere near me. Which stinks. Like a lot. Which is (one of the infinite number of) reasons why I’m lucky to live in the 21^st century.

I’m pretty sure that skype is the only reason that a good 50% of my relationships are still functioning. Being able to see someone’s face and hear someone’s voice isn't the same as being able to hug them and be with them physically, but it sure is close.

A few days ago I spent a ridiculous amount of time sitting on skype with a bunch of my friends back at Hiram. They pulled up a skype window, and sat down in the floor lounge, and I got to talk to all of them at once. I might not have been there physically, but I got to talk and laugh and see them, and it made my week so much brighter. 

Way back when I lived in Israel for a semester during my junior year of high school, I was able to skype with my family to help combat some of the homesickness. I could show them around my room, halfway around the world, and they could show me my very confused dog who didn’t understand why she was having a laptop shoved in her face. 

I can’t even count the number of times it’s been 3 am and I’m working on a paper and my brother has skyped me while sitting in his room putting off his homework and playing video games. Or my best friend has skyped me when he was studying in London, forgetting about the time difference, a little tipsy, and eager to tell me about his fun adventures. Or my grandmother, attempting to learn how to work her webcam has skyped me to tell me about all the things she is working on. Or my teacher, who very kindly offered to teach me over skype when I had to fly home for my grandfather’s funeral and miss a week of class. Or the catch ups with friends, or the meetings, or the million other examples I could think of.

Skype connects me to the people I care about. And I care about a lot of different people, in a whole lot of different places.