Today we become a teenager.

By we I mean these missives, you, and I. On 6.5.13, the first of these daily howdies arrived – to keep business pals advised in a dicey hour – our only thought back then how to survive till tomorrow. Thirteen times 365 times 600 equals almost three million words, longer than – can it be? – any single work published by one person? And as of today, we’re still chugging. Even if I kick tomorrow, which I’m not planning to, I’ve got four months of missives “in the tank” to beguile you though I’ve said goodnight.

I’m not boasting here, just reporting facts. Setting out I never dreamed of such a result. Neither did Columbus, setting sail. He was anticipating China, I … nothing, best I recall, except by chatting to reassure a few intimates, fear not, we’re not dead yet.

How did this happen! It’s like that old joke, “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: one bite at a time.

Mostly I blame delight. Mine in schmoozing, yours in urging. We had fun being together, enough to keep at it. We became friends. Our loneliness made room for one another (for all of us are at least somewhat lonely) in our busy days.

I can’t say what your company has meant to me. You, Jane, Henry, and my kids and grandkids are my reason to be. You keep me alive – and as lively as I can muster. If either of us didn’t show up for our daily stroll, that phase of our lives would be finished, and that would be sad.

What has fueled our intercourse? Amity’s my guess. I like you. These days I’m unlikely to know you in person, but your being here makes me like you. Birds of a feather. It warms the heart to know there’s someone else on earth who grooves to the same tune. (Using “groove” as a verb reveals my age.) We like those who are like us, especially those who like what we like. Growing up, I had no idea you existed. I figured I was a weirdo in my preferences, misfit, alone.

Bless the Internet for introducing us. I’ve got my beefs with our epoch’s detachment from community, how more and more we live alone with our screens. I’d revert to the village green and the community graveyard of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town given my druthers, only druthers aren’t given ever. We are when we are, arriving unbidden and making our way as we must, not as we choose, willy nilly creatures of our hour. Born a century earlier, I’d be dead by my age, of ailments we’ve only recently learned to detect and thwart. So am I glad to be living now? You bet.

Without the Internet ‘s wondrous wriggling into corners of humanity, feeling for affiliation, you and I would never have met. Without the Internet’s instantaneity and hospitality, we’d never have been permitted to schmooze so casually and intimately. Letters are grand, but the delay between composition and reception fosters a formidable formality. Letters last, while these missives evaporate like the mist – a big difference.

Might our interchange prove durable? Addison and Steele, Dr. Johnson, Hazlitt and a few other periodical spouters are still recalled, but that determination’s up to time. You have been the world to me, and I a little part of yours. “Think where man’s glory both begins and ends,” wrote Yeats, “and say my glory was I had such friends.”