Silver Thread

My college roommate’s girlfriend’s uncle (I’m not making this up, Rich) was a weirdo. He was very close with his niece, and she was a good friend, so I became a friend of his. This was in the days before Facebook and Myspace and all that. He was my very first internet friend. My only connection to him was his email address. I thought it was a little weird to have an internet friend, but he seemed harmless, and my roommate insisted that he was cool and I would meet him when the whole family got together over school break. So I was down with it. We’d chat a few times a week. He found out my girlfriend was in France, so he asked me one day if I’d ask her what cerf-volant meant. I said sure, no problem. And I forgot. I kept forgetting. My girlfriend and I had our share of issues, and trying to find out what cerf-volant meant was not at the top of my list.

So, every day, for weeks, I’d get at least one email with a single phrase:
“cerf-volant”.

Time went by. I still didn’t find out.

More emails simply saying, “cerf-volant.”

Google didn’t exist yet, so he didn’t know how to look it up. He wasn’t sure of the spelling. I still didn’t ask.

One day, I woke up, checked my email, and found this:

CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT CERF-VOLANT

So I finally asked the girlfriend. She said it basically meant “kite”.

I saw the uncle over school break for the first time. It wasn’t weird, because internet friends are real, as you know. I’m preaching to the choir here. So I told him cerf-volant meant “kite”. He smiled and told me he already knew that.