“Barry,” my cousin Mike said, “I think it’s time.” It was clear that my brother didn’t feel the same way, but he only shrugged, which Mike took as agreement. “Dave,” he said, giving the words as much gravity as he could muster, “Go get the dictionary.” I was nine years old, and a tag-along. I’d walked in on my brother telling a story about how—during school that morning—a girl he knew got her period in the middle of French class. And I laughed like the dickens. And then they called me on it. After I’d lugged the dictionary down from the spare room, Mike told me to look up the word period and read out the definition. “The end of a cycle, a series of events, or a single action?” “Keep going,” he said. “The full pause with which a sentence closes?” “Not that.” “An interval of geologic—“ “Gimme that!” He yanked the book towards him, read down the page, and pointed me towards the definition he’d found. Menstruation: the monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from pu...
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I remember my friend, Nikki, and I somehow tracking down some guys in Nebraska in high school over the internet. We were looking for some cornfed honkies, apparently. I also remember looking up information on Radiohead and Bjork. I wasn't a regular user until my first week of college, when overexposure occurred, and I frantically typed volumes to my friends at other universities to tell them every little last detail of my life. They would return the favor. I am so over that.
Oh yeah, and we would print up our emails on a dot matrix printer. Seriously.
In university, not only was I learning how to use the internet so I would stop pestering my boyfriend at the time, I had to learn how to use it on a Mac.
That being said, the first thing I did with the internet was look at porn, and then pull a Paul Reuben in one of the computer labs at Waterloo.
Actually, all jokes aside, the first thing I did was try to make a homepage for myself.
My homepages always inevitably sucked ass.
I got my first personal computer with internet capability in April 1996; it was a sexy Packard Bell P100 with a 14.4k modem. Woo hoo! I got it right when all my older friends (those already in Uni, like Beth) were all home for the summer, so I didn't have anyone with whom I could exchange emails. Perfect timing.
I remember looking up stuff on BNL and the Hip. And the U of G, naturally.
Later the same day, Ms. Jen came over. After briefing surfing a few mundane sites, she wanted to go into an internet chat room and fake pick up people, so that we could have creepy-yet-oh-so-funny cybersex. I believe that the pick-up line used most was "Wanna cyber?!?"
We went to a few chat rooms but all I remember is the wait time being exruciating.
Us: Hey, how are you?
...
...
...
Random girl: Good! You?
Us: Great! This intermanet thing is crazy!
...
...
...
RG: Yup.
Us: So...
...
...
...
Us: Wanna cyber?
And the third.
He's dead now. But you probably didn't need to know that.