we met where all the cool people hang out: online.
3 / 22 / 2010I’ve decided that I’m probably related to all of you. In some way…we’re related. Don’t come at me all, “But, you speak ENGLISH. Or: You’re pasty white and I’m totally that awesome olive toned skin shade. Or I’m pretty sure we’re NOT RELATED…”
We are.
My current proof? Today’s guest blogger, Itty Bitty Crazy, met her Fluffy Bear (we’ve all got *names* too, so don’t even go there, either, all, “Fluffy Bear? What. The. Hell.” Instead? Flaunt it. Haters are just jealous. We all know that) on the Internet.
Where’s the WE’RE TOTALLY RELATED! part?
I met Tim ON THE INTERNET.
Which means we’re totally related in some super string crazy physics way that I’ll never understand (I like to throw the super string thing out there so I sound smart. Or something. Truthfully? I haven’t a damn clue. I think it involves math, so that’s kind of where my relationship with the super sting theory ended)
And what follows is Itty Bitty Crazy.
Her story, I mean.
Also? You can check the rest of her insane life out over at Itty Bitty Crazy (Yah. That is SO her name. Duh)
Booshy asked me to guest blog – very flattering! – and the first thing I thought was: “What the hell do I write about?”
My dogs?
My job?
Something that annoys me?
No, all those things didn’t feel right.
And then it hit me… I’ll tell you how I met my husband, Fluffy Bear.
The short answer is this: We met on the internet.
“Well THAT’S not very interesting”, I hear you say. “I have at least two friends who met their husbands through eHarmony, or Match.com.”
Bear with me, dear Reader, because it just wasn’t as simple as that.
Fluffy Bear and I met online long before a faceless service was offering to match singles based on 5,284 901 points of compatibility. We met on Yahoo Chat. Or “Yahell,” as we soon came to call it, because it crashed constantly.
This was back in the late nineties, when you could still get a chat name that vaguely approached your real name, even if it was John, or Pete, or Dave.
I tried chat because I’d heard it was the new thing. I made myself a profile – no real details of course (I was new, not stupid) – and logged on.
I found myself in some insane entrance room where the colored lines of chat flew past so quickly there was no way I could keep up. I logged off, petrified.
The second time I tried, I looked at the canned chat rooms provided by Yahoo, but those weren’t much better. I jumped around, here and there, and then noticed some rooms with strange names further down the menu.
And so I wandered in.
Well, I thought I wandered in. By the unwritten rules of chat, I had rudely invaded someone’s private room and my Guardian Angel – overworked and under-appreciated – somehow protected me from walking in on a sordid cybersex scene.
Lucky for me, this was a room used by a group of friends, and friends-of-friends, (mostly based in the USA), to stay in touch.
The conversation snippets, confusing because they were criss-crossing and I had no idea who was talking to who about what, flowed up the screen in red, purple, italic and bold text, punctuated by emoticons.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m new.”
I have no idea why, but the guy who ran the chat room took pity on me. He spent the next hour or so explaining the rules and introducing me to others in the room, and that was that… I had found my online home.
I never bothered to check out any other rooms. I got to know everyone and was soon chatting and joking and emoticoning with the best of them. Even better, the guy who ran the room used to stream music, entertaining us all with anything from Depeche Mode to Shirley Bassey.
Soon, through turn of phrase and sense of humor, I began to identify the few of us Brits who were regulars in the room. We started chatting one day, joking around using words and phrases our American cousins didn’t quite get, like “pillock,” “wanker” and “up the wooden hill to Bedforshire.” We had such fun we decided to meet for a drink at the pub. That’s what you do in England, after all.
A few people dropped out last minute and, on the day, it was just me and two guys. I arranged with a friend to call me an hour after the meeting time to check I was still alive and give me the opportunity to claim a family emergency and escape. But it was OK – I had fun. We were in London’s China Town by then, having dinner.
The two guys had the same name, but they couldn’t have been more different. One was tall, polite, well spoken and a bit shy, and the other was an insecure arsehole with a floor length leather jacket, a slimy approach and the cheek to ask me to go home to his flat with him and try out his jet tub.
As it came time to head home before the last train, I walked towards the station with Fluffy Bear.
“I’d be happy to see you again,” I said, “but not with him.”
Fluffy Bear and I met the following Friday, he “missed the last train home”, had to stay the night and the rest, as they say, is history.
And so, as I sit here typing this, with my Fluffy Bear making dinner in the kitchen, keeping the puppy from attacking me, and concerned for me because I came home from work with a crushing headache, I send a silent “Thank you” into the Universe to that guy who I never met, whose real name I never learned, but who was kind enough to welcome me into his chat room.
I didn’t meet my boyfriend online but I met him through an online meetup group. Does that count?
awe how cute…i want that too!!! sniff…
i have the feeling that my prince charming was on his way, took a wrong turn and now his male ego is preventing him from asking for directions!
Yes we are kindred spirits! And, in these shallow anorexic, shaved chest days, meeting someone on the internet, where they can get to know your personality, sense of humor and craziness, without judging you on your looks, is a precious thing.
I’m a New Zealander so I get ‘Pillock’ and ‘Wanker’ no problems, but you lost me with ‘Up the hill to Bedfordshire’ !
Awww…..what a sweet story!
Also, super string theory….I know nothing about it, but know exactly what you are saying!
You mean not everyone meets their SO online? Really? Not in my family. Seriously, we all met online in one form or another. Chat rooms, dating services, online groups, we have it all.
Itty Bitty Crazy, I love your description of chat rooms in the mid to late 90′s. So perfectly describes that special kind of crazy and the rules that went along with. It took a brave soul to enter into that world, but once you did, learned all the etiquette and terms, you couldn’t imagine life before.
Reading your story took me back to my first venture into a chat room in the mid 90′s (before texting was something a five year old could understand and do with ease), the version I was on had bubble text boxes above your little stick form, and I thought that LOL was a shortened form of Hello. Yeah, I confused many people by laughing at them when they came into the room before I figured it out.
That’s almost exactly how I met my Son’s father! Back in 1995 on AOL (affectionately known as AOHell). And we used to attend a lot of AOL parties and get-togethers. The looks on people’s faces when we told ‘em we met online, in a chat room: priceless!