It's been seven years now and my forearms still erupt with goose bumps when I think about it. Absolutely impossible ... but it happened.

I belonged to a close knit group of friends, meeting nightly on the internet. We called ourselves "The Rats", and though chat rooms don’t have a reputation for honesty and integrity, these people were the exception. We laughed, cried and cared. Several times groups of Rats got together for face to face meetings all over the country. Once we even chipped in for an airline ticket, so a Rat in Australia could join us in Las Vegas. I was never disappointed meeting one of these friends for the first time, they were always the person they'd been online.

Computers are scary contraptions. Helplessness and panic lurk just under my skin, ready to consume me when one of these machines doesn’t do what I ask. These emotions were choking me in late 1997 when our computer refused to connect to the internet. Again and again, literally hundreds of times I tried to log on, but it just didn't happen. I called my service provider and was told the problem had to be with the telephone company. The telephone company assured me the problem rested with my service provider. I even loaded the computer in my car and took it to a repair shop, Fifty dollars later they told me there was nothing wrong with it.

More than a month went by and I was lost in a maze, and worse ... I missed the Rats. Several times each day I still punched the keys and watched the same message from hell appear on the screen, "Internet Connection Failed". Then, late one night I walked through the house before going to bed, locking doors and turning off lights. Almost out of habit, as I passed the computer I punched in the usual commands and was stunned as it cycled though its steps and connected to the web.

Bursting with excitement, I hurried into the net looking for my friends. There was only one Rat in the chat room, a young woman who recently graduated with a degree in psychology. I had worked on a crisis hotline for several years, so she and I talked shop quite a bit. But before I could say hello to her another member of our group came into the chat room, obviously upset." I need to talk to somebody! I need to talk NOW!" She began.

Her story unfolded quickly. She'd just found out her husband was having an affair. A pistol lay on the desk next to her computer and she planned to kill him when he got home from work, then kill herself.

The three of us talked though the night and slowly emotion gave way to logic. A blue spruce in our yard was silhouetted against a pale eastern sky when our friend assured us she felt better and wouldn¹t be taking any drastic action.

We watched her exit the chat room, then I typed, "How are you doing?" to my psychologist friend, and hit the key to send the message. Incredibly, the words "Internet Connection Failed" burned back at me from the screen.

For the next 10 days I tried without success to get back online. After a lot of pleading and begging on my part, the phone company finally agreed to send a serviceman out to check our lines. The man wasn't in our house five minutes before he climbed the basement steps, saying, "There's no way that line could work. You had a dead short down there."

But it did work ... somehow. Connecting three friends when they needed to be together most.