How do you tell someone you very much want to be their friend? How do you tell someone you are looking into the future and you feel them in your life? Not literally prescience, of course. Rather picturing life with that connection, and without, and greatly preferring the idea of having them in your life, and being in theirs. When I was a child, it was literally as simple as walking up and asking "Do you want to be friends?" Everyone knew what it meant. There were no heavy commitments, no assumptions, and few red flags raised. It was assumed that sometimes it wouldn't work out, and in that case it was no big deal. And if it did work out, there was the potential that with little effort you were about to make a dear friend for life. As an adult it's much more complicated. Everyone has their own mysterious emotional baggage. People are afraid to commit to anything. And because we're adults now, seemingly with the stress of the whole world on our shoulders, those willing to commit to at least try, often simply do not have the mental, emotional, or other resources to properly honor such a commitment. And sometimes we've simply lost our belief that it's worth the trouble at all. Now let's throw in some twists and turns. As children we make friends at school during recess, or by walking around the neighborhood and latching on to whomever lived nearby. But what if through the wonders of television and Internet you've found someone special you would like to have in your life? On top of everything else, there are now elements of fame (they were on T.V., several times), a generation gap (they're literally half your age), an intelligence and educational gap (the reason they were on T.V.), and a distance gap (three thousand miles away on another coast). Shall I change voices now? I'm clearly not speaking in the hypothetical anymore. There is someone I admire tremendously, someone I'm attracted to in many ways. We've spoken very briefly via email a few of times, over the past couple of years. I'm certain we're both tremendously busy. And even if she had time to chit-chat with a stranger, how awkward must that be for her? So I've kept my distance, in no small part based on insecurity around whether I would be seen as worthy of her time. What eighteen year old Ph.D. student has time for some stranger she likely, if incorrectly, thinks is only interested in her because of her hair style? Speaking practically for a moment, I've found that any long distance friendship suffers somewhat from that distance. Even if I walked outside and asked someone to their face "Do you want to be friends?" if they then moved thousands of miles away, it would be difficult to foster trust or intimacy. And that's only considering the one aspect of distance. What if she simply is too busy? What if she simply isn't interested? What if she is distracted by other friends that do get to see her every day? In trying speak practically, I find myself speaking pessimisticly. Having learned to be a pessimist, and being a complete chicken, I'm answering the question of how to tell someone I very much want to be their friend with the passive aggressive act of composing this and posting it to one of my web sites. Perhaps random chance or a twinkling of curiosity on her part might bring her here to hear me ask... Alia Sabur, do you want to be friends? - Laszlo PS - Thank you again so very much for the pictures!