This is a long, rambling story about how my little doggie avatar came to be. Please bear with me.

When my daughter was in Middle School, I made a point of listening to her music. As she advanced to High School, we got into the habit of listening to her albums in the morning before I drove her to the place she would get on the bus that would take her to school. I discovered that I enjoyed a lot of her music, music by secular artists that I got to know through those sessions together. I discovered that I really enjoyed Jewell, the Wallflowers, Smash Mouth, and Blink 182. However, I thought it was important to do my own exploration of modern popular music and to look at Christian artists.

At the time, most of the CCM played on my local Christian radio station was drivel, and I had not developed an appreciation for modern Christian music. I figured there must be some artists out there that I could relate to, and so I dis a search on the internet. I found three, Sixpence None the Richer, Sara Groves, and Jennifer Knapp, and ordered representative albums to listen to.

When I heard Jennifer Knapp’s Kansas album, I was blown away. I instantly became a fan, bought all of her albums, and even went (with my daughter) to see her live in concert. Ms. Knapp was touring with Jars of Clay.

But then Jennifer Knapp dropped off the face of the earth. “On sabbatical” was the official story, but I really wanted to know about it if she ever came back. So I joined an online forum of Jennifer Knapp fans. I did not really fit in with the primary demographic of Knapp fans, who tended to be younger than me and female. Furthermore, I am a very shy and private person. I don’t talk much in social settings and I don’t have a lot of close friends. I determined that my online interaction would be very limited. I would present a very tightly edited version of myself.

I thought of the 1993 New Yorker cartoon. Two dogs are sitting in front of a home computer. One dog has his paws on the keyboard. He is turning to the other and saying, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.”

That seemed like the ideal approach. Speak my mind, share my thoughts, but leave out personal details. That way no one could judge me by appearance, by age.

And so, I chose my little doggie to be my avatar on the Jennifer Knapp forums. I now use it almost everywhere I have a presence on the ‘net. And the meaning is, “Judge me by my words, not my appearance; by the quality of my ideas, not my personal circumstances; by the courtesy of my speech, not the details of my life.”