Space and time continuum?

Saturday night, I tuned in to the last half of the NCAA men's ice hockey championship game between the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs and the University of Massachusetts Minutemen.

In and of itself, watching the game is not news- or blog-worthy. I’m not one of those people to write about every little thing I do, see or eat, so what I watch on television wouldn’t rank up there, either.

But how I came to be encouraged to watch the close game in progress (it was 1-0 Duluth when I tuned in), who I “watched” the game with and how that was accomplished is blog-worthy or, at the very least, a fun topic to write about.

My friend Lois Backscheider sent me an electronic message: “Are you watching? Bulldogs up by 1!”

After a few more messages involving the score and period, she implored me to find a television on which to watch the “nail-biter game.”

When I had located the channel and found the game, I let her know I was with her in spirit and would cheer on her beloved Dogs, since she’s an alum of the university.

University of Minnesota Duluth Pep Band. Photo by Clint Austin /Duluth News Tribune.

But here’s the background you need to know about Lois and how we came to know each other.

Known to me at the time as Miss Moline, Lois was my Journalism I teacher while I was in 10th grade at Overlea High School. She taught journalism and English classes and also served as the school newspaper advisor.

After finishing her career with Baltimore County Public Schools as the assistant principal at Lansdowne Middle School, Lois and her husband Denny in 1994 moved back to her home state of Minnesota to help care for an ailing parent.

Thanks to the connectedness provided by Facebook, Lois and I became FB friends after not seeing each other since I was a 15-year-old sophomore and she was a rookie teacher. 

Since we reconnected, we have discussed the changing face of journalism and the general delivery of news content. At the time, I was the education reporter for the Frederick News-Post and was long used to digital photography, writing stories on a laptop and filing the finished product to an in-house server where editors had the access needed to do their thing. 

I appreciated not having to go to a library to do research, nor did I have to go to the court house to view trial files or the police station to view charging documents, thanks to the Internet. Frederick County also streamed most of its government and Board of Education meetings online as well as aired them on the Frederick County cable station, which made life much easier on many reporters who needed to double check a quote from someone or verify some little factoid.

But as that sophomore during the school year of 1972-73, I could not have imagined a future with the world at our fingertips and the instantaneous delivery of not only news and photos but also the real-time personal communications that could take place.

So it was one of those awakening moments Saturday night when the gift of what was happening with my former high school teacher struck me.

Over the chasm of nearly 1,200 miles (to say nothing of nearly five decades), Lois and I were watching the same hockey game (thanks to satellite TV) and communicating in real time via Facebook’s Messenger service. She was nestled in her Hermantown home, cuddling with her two dogs after her husband abandoned the game to watch the NASCAR race, and I was watching from a neighborhood pub.

We cheered together when the Bulldogs scored their third and final goal, watched the kids representing her alma mater embrace the national championship trophy after finishing off the Minutemen, 3-0, and then bid each other a good night.

There’s a lot of negative things to be said about the Internet in general and social media networks specifically, and they are definitely tools that need to be used carefully, judiciously and safely.

But it’s moments like Saturday night that make me smile and appreciate the way social media lets us connect and build memories that couldn’t have otherwise happened, short of a well-planned and expensive vacation to make it happen in person.