Michael D. Davis.

The internet is truly an amazing, marvelous, strange thing. The capacities of the internet are boundless.

Something the invention of the internet revolutionized was pen pals. Instead of throwing a stamp on your letter to your buddy in fluflekistan, ya just click a button. When used correctly, you can meet truly wonderful people on the internet, and no, this is neither an ad nor a scam.

I have met many people over the internet in my days, but I shall tell you about four. The first is Cindy. She lives in New Jersey, we’ve never met in person and yet I’ve known her for years. Cindy is the editor of a webzine that published multiple of my short stories, and of which I still contribute illustrations to this day. Cindy is a big animal lover, who writes tough as nails short stories. Without Cindy I wouldn’t have had any of my books published, I wouldn’t be where I am, because she introduced me to Mr. Knott.

Mr. Tony Knott, a retired doctor living over by Coney Island, New York, who picked back up his stethoscope during the COVID pandemic, and is still working hours at a little clinic. A writer, an artist and a publisher, he was publishing a collection of Cindy’s stories.

Cindy told him about me, he published a couple of books of mine, then taught me how to do it myself. He and I have actually exchanged letters the old fashion way. These almost unintelligible documents of drawings, words, and hieroglyphics aren’t your usual type of pen pal letters, but they’re always a delight to receive and send.

Mr. Rees, the lighthouse man, lives all the way over in Swansea, Wales. Another writer, like Cindy, he published a few of my stories back in the day on his own webzine. We messaged back and forth here and there, a four-thousand-mile gap bridged by the internet. I refer to him as the lighthouse man because he actually lives across from a lighthouse. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve always lived in landlocked Iowa, or because I’ve seen too many movies, but I thought that was just ridiculously cool.

Last but not least we have Cheryl, who out of all the people on this list, lives the closest, a few hours to the south and east in Kalona, Iowa. So, every week I draw two cartoons for the paper. One that is usually about two inches from this article called Local Lunacy, but I also do another called Flysoup.

Flysoup gets sent out to a few different papers in Iowa, and if that paper is having a slow news week, and needs to fill some space, they’ll throw in my Flysoup. Every week I send out Flysoup to about five different papers, and every week without fail the only one that emails me back is The Kalona News.

That’s Cheryl. At a bare minimum, she will tell me to have a good day; to my recollection, she hasn’t missed a week since I started sending her the cartoons.

A couple of months ago I was thinking, I may not be able to go to Wales, New Jersey, or New York, but Kalona is right there. So, last week, me, my Ma, and my sister jumped in the car and started heading that way.

Firstly, we let my sister drive. This caused us to have three near death experiences before we left the Tama-Toledo area. This also led to us ending up on a length of gravel road in the middle of nowhere because Google Maps said it was the way to go. My Ma nearly had a conniption over the whole thing, while my sister didn’t bat an eye because even though I think we were driving through a cornfield at one point, she kept her blind faith that Google Maps knows all.

We finally end up at the Kalona News office, I walk in, and there’s Cheryl, the person I’d known for over a year but never met. She was awesome.

I don’t think she was expecting the full weirdness of my family, though — I say this because no one ever does. In the span of 10 minutes we tell the whole story of the gravel road detour, a related story about getting lost in Chicago, I give her my “death” cartoon book which has pictures of a friend killing me in the back of it, we say that dude is having a kid, and also mention a joke he had about my sister, who he doesn’t get along with, that mentions Kim Jong-Un.

I’m sure for Cheryl and everyone over there at The News, it was a lot to take all at once. Especially, if you don’t have exactly my family’s type of humor because that Kim Jong-Un joke fell flat.

Everything considered, however, I think it went well. I know I enjoyed myself. I even signed a Flysoup cartoon in their paper for one of the employees of The Kalona News. I mean, it was like I was a rock star or something.

One day I may meet Cindy, Mr. Knott, or Mr. Rees in person like I did Cheryl last week. And that would be really cool, I think I’d just have to remember to cut out the Kim Jong-Un jokes, they are just not for everyone.