Ah, the wonders of pre-2000 internet.
I was 13 in 1997 and my parents had just bought the computer that would ultimately lead to my mother meeting a man in Indiana and, eventually, ruining her marriage with my father.
But, boy was that fun.
I still remember chatting on AOL with some "girl" under the handle "princesszh". We talked for hours on end about absolutely nothing at all and since I had ZERO social skills, particularly with women, it was nice to be able to pretend like I was some smooth-talking internet pimp thanks to the anonymity of the interwebs.
In between, of course, going into chat rooms with my brother and cousins and pretending we were women who wanted to "cyber" with someone, waiting for the moment when they said something dirty and revealing "Oh my god, we're dudes! You're such a fag!".
My favorite story about life on the net, though, is also my saddest and most pathetic.
About a month before I started high school, I met a couple of people on AOL who were also incoming freshman to my school. One girl, Christina DeRita, seemed super sweet and nice and we talked, on end, for what seemed like days. I was so excited because I figured I'd meet this girl and we'd become boyfriend/girlfriend because, well, I was an idiot and didn't understand how high school was going to change everything about everyone right from the jump.
Fast forward to my first week of high school and that entire group of people I met online had clearly not been impressed with me and were getting to run in a different social circle. Suddenly Christina wouldn't even talk to me because, as she put it, I was a geek and all of the people I had spent a good portion of my summer with made fun of me and refused to let me in their social group.
Though I didn't know it at the time, it was a nice learning experience about the difference between life on the internet and life in the real world. I may have been cool in the latter but I couldn't overcome that in the former.
It also made life all the more sweeter when I got to college and finally did get over the social hangups I had before. Heck, it's probably a big reason I developed as many friendships as I did in college, with all the other people who experienced the same social awkwardness I did in high school, and since college led to me finding the woman I would marry, I guess I am happy to have had to endure those awkward first weeks of high school where it seemed like my entire "life" was crumbling.
