Resistance Is Futile

There was a time, not that long ago, when I was fairly certain I would never own a computer. I thought the internet was all pornography and rumors.

Well, of course, it is but, what are you gonna do? The telephone is pretty neat too but the natural progression of that was telemarketers and drunk-dialing exes so, you have to take the good with the bad.

I lived out of state and my family encouraged me to get a computer so that we could better keep in touch via e-mail. That sounded very artificial and perfunctory to me compared to snailmail. I recalled writing- typing- a letter to a woman in New Orleans that I loved very much, on my Brother Word Processor and her anguished, pained reaction to receiving that wonderfully crafted but typed missive. She was hurt by my use of my new toy. She wanted my crappy penmanship as much as she wanted me. I felt bad. I had liked seeing my words printed out neatly for a change. I thought she would appreciate too. It looked like being published to me. It looked antiseptic to her. The love was there but, it was like reading a newspaper to her.

I had that in mind when I later learned of the internet and e-mail. Why sacrifice intimacy for immediacy? 

Love is the singer not the song.

Slowly though, I warmed to the idea of a computer. I used to go over to a buddy's house and we'd golf on his Playstation. Tim showed me his computer and all he could do on that and told me that once I got one, I'd probably never play Tiger Woods Golf again. Well, I doubted that. We looked at some pretty funny porn clips he had collected. Porn's not supposed to be funny but, people can say the darnedest things while having sex. The availability of porn was not much of a sell to me. It just reaffirmed my thought that the internet was all porn and lies. He showed me a 'chat room' next. People from all over the world were 'on-line', some on camera and they were all his 'friends'.

What the fuck were these people doing? THIS is 'conversation'? He could type to these people or actually converse one on one with them. I remember a very pretty blonde drinking a glass of what I thought was water. Tim told me it was moonshine and that the girl was a bad alcoholic. No one who drinks like that looks like that. More internet lies, I guessed.

"Talk to her", Timmy said. Sheesh, I lost my shyness around women after highschool but, talk to a woman on the internet? Typing was an option, he pointed out.

Hard to believe that the guy who is- by all accounts-  THE most charming bottom-spanker on on the internet- was once all thumbs trying to 'talk' to a pretty girl via a keyboard. I felt like I was twelve again!

So, uh, how are you....

The chat rooms themselves were not a selling point either. I just couldn't see having '400 friends' like Tim said he had and 'talking' to these virtual strangers as if I knew them. Silly. Neither of those things made me rush out and get a computer. Tim offered to go with me to pick one out whenever I changed my mind. He said we could e-mail and even chat if I did. Yeah....him and his wife already wore me out with texts on the cell phone, I should give them another tool to do that? I didn't think so.

Alert, dedicated, non-readers have already surmised by now that I did eventually get a computer. I'm kinda glad I didn't back then. I'm kinda glad because I saved myself from getting one of those bulky, complicated one's with the tower thingy doohickey thingamajigs instead of this nice laptop I am using even as we...speak. I HAVE A BLOG! I am on Topix instead of chat rooms with good looking drunk chicks and, yes, I have seen pornography. It's there any time you want it! And it's more disgusting than I had even imagined! I found it via google which is pretty neat and not just a directory for porn. I've got a head for trivia and google helps reaffirm what I already know and find what I don't know. It beats the snot out of encyclopedias even if people regularly trash Wikipedia. I Facebook! I don't e-mail as much as I would have though but that's because everyone I know is on FB and none of those people are offended by electronic communication in the form of personal messages. It's really fast, ya know. It's been about three years now and I'm learning new stuff, slowly but surely. I've got friends whom I love and care about whom I might not ever meet but, that's OK. That's normal now.

And I don't know how I ever lived without it.