This entry was auto-mirrored from MovableType to Xanga

The past, the internet, and my first boyfriend.

Because of a friend, I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately. Much of it is of my quasai-famous days as a blogger — when the internet *seemed* saturated with blogs, but but blog*spot, xanga, and livejournal had not yet really hit it off.

However, this feeling of nostalgia took my mind back to paths that I had long forgotten about. The days were my internet life didn’t revolve around the great “world wide web” but was fastened to the fascination called e-mail, and a new-spangled service called AOL.

So, I’m going to tell you a story about my past.

I was one of the first people I knew to have a modem. Hell, I didn’t even know what a modem really did when I first got it. That was in fourth/fifth grade (about 11 years ago). It wasn’t until I was in 7th grade when I installed the newfangled windows95 onto my computer that I got Juno — the first free e-mail service. I still remember my first ever email address – krazykim@juno.com. I wonder who has it now.

My first AOL was AOL 2.5. Now, I have to tell you, that this was in the dark ages — my modem [because it was one of the first] was extremely slow. Remember your 28k? Mine was a 2400 baud modem — aka 2.4k. …yeah. I know.

Anyhow, this AOL was amazing! I could talk to people through text in real time! That was really cool.

In one of these chat rooms (teen chat, i believe) I met a guy named ZazU(some number) from Canada. I told him I was 15, he said he was 17 — I was really 12 (but who cares?).

You know those faces on the milk cartons? That probably could have been me. I was definately not careful back in the day, and if Zazu(some number) wasn’t such a stand up guy, I probably wouldn’t be around today to tell the story.

Anyhow, this guy, turned out to be named Lairay (my last name). He was from Canada and he was really nice and fun and smart. Unfortunately, he thought I was 15. Long story short, I told him how old I was 8 months after we met, and long after we had become “boyfriend/girlfriend”.

I have long since lost the gold-plated ID bracelet he sent me with my name engraved on the front and “love Lairay” engraved on the back… But I still have the letter he wrote to me and link pieces from that very bracelet that we had to take off because the bracelet was too big. I still have printouts [for some reason i printed everything at the beginning of my internet career] of almost all of our e-mails in a binder somewhere at home.

And sometimes, like today, I still wonder whatever happend to Lairay, my first boyfriend, and only internet love.

So, if your name is Lairay and you remember a girl from 10 years ago (has it really been that long?) that you loved from the internet, give me a holler.

I’ve been thinking about you.

Love,
Kim