Billy is a kid ... a little kid ... not much different from you and I when we were kids. The not much part is important though.

It's not his friends at school, it's people on the street, in stores, and banks, that stare and sometimes say something about it. This is painful for Billy, it reminds him that he's different. His friends have grown up with it and don't even notice anymore, and the kids who've just met him get used to it real quick. He's smart, and funny, and nice to everyone, so there's no reason to be mean to him. The hurtful ones are the adults who stare and whisper or make a face.

Why are we all supposed to look exactly the same? Billy sees lots of people who aren't exactly handsome or beautiful, and he doesn't grimace, or whisper about their homeliness, or smirk because they aren't pretty. Somehow we've developed this habit of ignoring plain ugliness while pointing at deformity. There's a saying ... " Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Some of us have just never learned to "behold" beyond the skin and the bone formation and that's a real shame, because we may be missing out on meeting the best friend we could ever know.

Billy's friends take his hand for granted and judge him for what they know, not what they see. And, if the truth be known, because they know him as a good friend, they probably don't even see his hand as anything but a hand. His hand is ignored because it isn't important to who and what Billy really is to them.

This is unquestionably one of the biggest factors in the popularity of Internet Chatting. Oh, not that everyone who chats is deformed or ugly. Just that a lot of folks who are insecure about their appearance, and suffer fear of rejection because of that insecurity, find comfort in the anonymity of the computer as a communications medium. It's really a wonderful gift to the shy and the insecure, and yes, the malformed, to be able to interact with the rest of the world comfortably and confidently and equally.

You paint a mental image of the person with whom you're chatting without hearing their voice or seeing their face. You learn more about what's in their heart, I think, what they're like on the inside. Over the past year chatting I've met a lot of people without seeing them, and in most cases without hearing their voices, and am fascinated by the friendships that have evolved. And don't think that they all become my friends. There are some very ugly spirited people chatting around the world that I want no part of, and who knows. They may be gorgeous.

I feel like I know some of my new chatfriends of the past year as well as, or better than, friends I've known for years. It's easier to be open, even intimate, in the anonymity of the internet.

Perhaps I'm in the minority in the chat world, but I'm not looking for romantic entanglement, and I'm not concerned with anonymity. I'm quite happily married and am in a business that puts my face out in front of the public daily. What I enjoy is making new friends from around the world, and I get a kick out of sending my picture off to these chat friends after we've gotten to know each other, and hearing back how much different I am from their mental image. I have to admit that my chat persona is probably not exactly who I am in real life, but it can't be too far off the real thing. There's no pressure on my chatfriends to send their pictures back to me. Funny thing though. In real life lots of my friends are homely, but in my mind's eye all my chat friends are drop dead gorgeous, yet I've never seen their faces. That says something for seeing past the skin and into the heart and soul.

It's nice knowing that in a chat room Billy would be treated just like what he is, a regular kid. Chatters will paint him in their mind's eye as a bright, happy, handsome young man ... and isn't that all that really matters?

- Billy's friend