The Frederick News-Post, Md., Joshua R. Smith column

Jan. 28—I stood off to the side at the school where my wife works as half the building's population filtered into the cafeteria for an event a couple of months ago. The chatty children bounced a loud din off the cinder-block walls, and my wife silenced them with one simple command.

It was a foreign experience — and I don't mean witnessing her amazing command of the hyped horde, even though that was indeed impressive considering at home she has to holler at our son at least three times before he turns off the video games.

The foreign part, for me, was being in a crowd. Of people. You know — those living, content-creating beings that populate our world.

Despite having a family and career, my existence has become one largely of solitude, as long as you don't count the dog who snoozes in my vicinity almost constantly. I didn't set out for this. It's just developed due to schedules, a very lazy dog and a job that keeps me trapped behind a screen reading today's two categories of sport stories: those about Dan Snyder's heinous misdeeds, and those not. Certainly there's also been assistance from a planet where it is increasingly easy to exist in a bubble, to get comfortable sharing a great deal of yourself minus the human contact part.

I'm too often left with nothing but my thoughts and that "Whopper, Whopper, Whopper, Whopper" Burger King jingle in my mind.

But I am a social creature. I became a journalist to write about events and participants. The last person I interviewed face to face, however, was three years ago. And I don't remember the one before that. I've chronicled the entire pro career of one local athlete yet only seen him in the flesh on TV.

More than ever, I find myself craving interaction — as long as the human involved is not Dan Snyder. In contrast, my wife is quite content playing Tetris or sleeping. Perhaps that's because she spends more than enough time every week around a hyped horde of kids.

Still, as the three of us gather for weeknight dinners, she asks, "So, what was exciting in your day?" And after my son tells us about the latest classmate who threatened or insulted him or his friends, I can't tell if she's teasing when she directs the question at me. Because the only remotely exciting part of my days occurs when I scrub Great Dane slobber off the walls in our bedroom or disinfect the bathroom used by a 12-year-old boy.

I don't often get to see people because they're working when I'm not. So, naturally, texting has become my lone social lifeline. To my wife's utter annoyance. She will see me pecking away on my phone again and say — all bothered that I'm not instead talking to her about her next venture to spend our money — "Who are you texting now?!"

It could be my best bud. It could be one of his kids. A neighbor. A former neighbor. A co-worker. A guy I sat next to on the bus in second grade. An old buddy who lives in Atlanta. An old buddy's sister. My cousins. My sister in-law's cousin who lives in Minnesota. My brother in-law's sister's dog.

OK. I tricked you on the last one, because that would also be my dog. And if he could text me, every five minutes he would just ask "When do we eat?"

Regardless, it's reached a point where I might even be texting someone I've never actually met. I've been carrying on a texting relationship with someone I developed a rapport with through work phone calls and emails that were a welcome diversion from the latest Dan Snyder atrocity. It's based on our love of nerdy sports trivia and the fact that men our age can go for hours simply naming Major League Baseball starting second basemen from 1992.

I also communicate regularly with a fellow sports journalist who happens to cover my favorite football team in the same state where my sister in-law's cousin lives. I'm not sure how it even began, but it likely involved me complimenting his fine work and pestering him on Twitter with astute fan questions like "WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE DEFENSE," which somehow led to the discovery of our shared love of fullbacks who played 30 years ago.

I continue supporting his reporting, but now we might even chat about less important parts of life that don't involve such crucial world figures as former Philadelphia Eagle Keith Byars. And it was kinda neat once on his podcast when he referred to me as a "Friend of the Show."

This, I guess, is what some friendships are today. I'll take it.

Not that I need a hyped horde of pals, but friendships seem harder to come by and maintain. And that seems odd considering how popular and engaging everyone appears on social media. It's funny when you see "friends" from those platforms who are not shy about showing off when they're Hershey Park Happy or preparing to devour a beautiful plate of homemade chicken piccata that they simply HAD to photograph, yet when you happen to see them in public, they have nothing to say.

"So, how was the chicken?" I might ask them. Maybe I just seem too desperate.

There are lonesome reminders everywhere lately. I was watching football one Sunday when an AT&T commercial told me that "everything's better when we connect." At the time, I was in the basement, my wife was on the next floor playing Tetris on her phone, and my son was on the third floor playing Call of Duty.

Then, in consecutive mid-week visits to Safeway, I heard 1980s pop star and noted philosopher Tiffany singing "I Think We're Alone Now" over the store's loudspeakers. "There doesn't seem to be anyone around," she intoned as I noticed exactly that both times.

I resolved earlier this month to go see more people in 2023 and beyond. People might be very busy making and photographing chicken piccata and taking their kids to sports practices that won't actually make a single difference in their future, and they might not care about seeing me, but dammit I'm going to try to make them.

I already had some success, grabbing coffee with a bro who I hadn't seen in about a year. I came away feeling energized, but that might've just been the caffeine. Later, as my wife and I discussed this friend, she reminded me that, a few decades back, he had warned me not to ask her out.

If I had listened to him, she said, today I'd be "a loser who is all by himself."

To be honest, she was quoting a comment I've made to her in the past. Yet it feels like at least one of those seems true anyway. You can decide which.

It's really starting to sink in that maybe this is just the way it is now. Being a person will continue to be less and less about being in person.

Gosh. Who knew we could all learn so much from Tiffany?