A Conversion Story (Part II)
(Coming in late? Start from the beginning!)
December 30, 1990, was a long day at work (I was a cashier at the local Foodtown) and when I got home at about 9:00 that night, I went right up to my room and went straight to bed. Around midnight, though, I woke up and decided to go check my e-mail. I had five new messages—a pretty significant number, considering both the time period and the fact that I’d only been online for two days—the first of which had arrived at 6:52 p.m. and was from a girl named Anna Queen. She had read my post on The B-52’s board and, as a die-hard B-52’s fan herself, was extremely curious about this greatest hits CD she’d never heard of; “Is it new?” she wondered. I replied that no, it was actually a few years old, but only available in Europe, unless (like me) you frequented a CD shop that specialized in imports. Would she like a copy? [Send.]
After replying to the four other messages in my inbox, I felt prompted—prompted; there’s a funny word, for an agnostic, but that’s definitely what it was!—to check my e-mail again. (Back then, new messages wouldn’t show up unless you left your mailbox and came back.) Sure enough, there was another reply from Anna Queen. She was also online, and we spent the next three hours e-mailing each other back and forth (interstate chat rooms were still years away) and discovering that, hey, we had a lot in common! By 3:00 a.m., I was pretty tired and, as I told Anna, didn’t “want my head to fall off into the cash register” at work, the next day, so I called it a night. We did, however, agree that since neither of us was too thrilled about the New Year’s party we were planning to attend, the next night, we would meet online at 6:30 p.m.—Foodtown closed at 6:00, on New Year’s Eve—and have an e-mail marathon into the new year. (This was, in part, a result of the new charges Prodigy was about to institute: as of midnight, January 1, 1991, each family—note: not each person, each family—would be limited to 30 free e-mails per month, after which each message would be 25¢—the same price as a first-class stamp.)
By midnight, there was no doubt in either of our minds that we had fallen head over heels in love with each other. Of course, at such an early stage in the relationship, the expressions thereof were quite guarded, but it was definitely there. Combine that with the fact that each of our horoscopes (another of Prodigy’s features) talked about finding love in the coming year, and that was just a little too coincidental. I had sent her over 150 e-mails in just six hours, and she had sent me about the same. It was like a drug; I couldn’t get enough of her. Rather than waste our entire 30 messages for January before sunrise on New Year’s Day, I told her I’d call her. She accepted, asking me to call at about 12:30, as her sister was to be on the phone with her boyfriend from 12:00-12:30. The plan was in the works.
Tune in next time for Part III!
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened” (Matt. 7:7-8).
December 30, 1990, was a long day at work (I was a cashier at the local Foodtown) and when I got home at about 9:00 that night, I went right up to my room and went straight to bed. Around midnight, though, I woke up and decided to go check my e-mail. I had five new messages—a pretty significant number, considering both the time period and the fact that I’d only been online for two days—the first of which had arrived at 6:52 p.m. and was from a girl named Anna Queen. She had read my post on The B-52’s board and, as a die-hard B-52’s fan herself, was extremely curious about this greatest hits CD she’d never heard of; “Is it new?” she wondered. I replied that no, it was actually a few years old, but only available in Europe, unless (like me) you frequented a CD shop that specialized in imports. Would she like a copy? [Send.]
After replying to the four other messages in my inbox, I felt prompted—prompted; there’s a funny word, for an agnostic, but that’s definitely what it was!—to check my e-mail again. (Back then, new messages wouldn’t show up unless you left your mailbox and came back.) Sure enough, there was another reply from Anna Queen. She was also online, and we spent the next three hours e-mailing each other back and forth (interstate chat rooms were still years away) and discovering that, hey, we had a lot in common! By 3:00 a.m., I was pretty tired and, as I told Anna, didn’t “want my head to fall off into the cash register” at work, the next day, so I called it a night. We did, however, agree that since neither of us was too thrilled about the New Year’s party we were planning to attend, the next night, we would meet online at 6:30 p.m.—Foodtown closed at 6:00, on New Year’s Eve—and have an e-mail marathon into the new year. (This was, in part, a result of the new charges Prodigy was about to institute: as of midnight, January 1, 1991, each family—note: not each person, each family—would be limited to 30 free e-mails per month, after which each message would be 25¢—the same price as a first-class stamp.)
By midnight, there was no doubt in either of our minds that we had fallen head over heels in love with each other. Of course, at such an early stage in the relationship, the expressions thereof were quite guarded, but it was definitely there. Combine that with the fact that each of our horoscopes (another of Prodigy’s features) talked about finding love in the coming year, and that was just a little too coincidental. I had sent her over 150 e-mails in just six hours, and she had sent me about the same. It was like a drug; I couldn’t get enough of her. Rather than waste our entire 30 messages for January before sunrise on New Year’s Day, I told her I’d call her. She accepted, asking me to call at about 12:30, as her sister was to be on the phone with her boyfriend from 12:00-12:30. The plan was in the works.
Tune in next time for Part III!
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