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Back in 1995, I got myself started with this internet thing--maybe you've heard of it. Back then, people were saying it would catch on. It turns out people were right.
My favorite aspect of the internet, pretty much from the first time I used it, was e-mail. What fun it was to type out messages that most of the time actually made it to the person intended to get them. The messages could be well-thought-out and carefully edited or simply dashed off in a quick burst. They could be sent at work to avoid an actual conversation with an annoying colleague, or they could go to an old friend too far away for expensive long-distance calls. Sometimes the messages got lost in cyberspace, but even the post office misplaces a letter or two every now and then.
I had just gotten a big, chunky Macintosh Classic computer that year, one so heavy that its shoulder bag could cause permanent rotator cuff damage. In addition to occasionally lugging it back and forth from home to work, I could hook it up to a phone line and connect to the internet, accessing those e-mail messages I enjoyed sending and receiving. This semi-portable internet connection was especially useful back when my first wife and I were still married and would drive from New England to visit her family in Ohio on holiday trips.
My in-laws were sweet people, my wife's mom an obstetrics nurse and her dad a nursing home administrator, both in the latter years of long and productive careers. They had just begun to get trained on the first computers installed at work, learning simple word processing and basic data entry.
But they had never seen a newfangled Mac computer up close before, so they were excited yet somewhat skeptical when I set up my miracle machine atop their kitchen table on Thanksgiving morning during our 1995 visit. But when I told them they could send an e-mail message to their other daughter, my wife's sister Andrea, who was stuck working the holiday five hundred miles away in Massachusetts, they were thrilled.
I strung a lengthy phone cord, purchased for just this moment, from the wall jack to the computer. The machine hummed its dial tone, beeped its numbers, and buzzed and groaned and churned until we were finally online and ready to communicate. We all gathered around as I typed in Andrea 's e-mail address and a subject line of "Hello, Andrea!" Then I turned the computer in my father-in-law's direction so that he could do the honors.
"You can e-mail Andrea now," I said to him. "Tell her anything you want."
My father-in-law chuckled, exchanged nervous glances with us all, rubbed his hands together, straightened his glasses, tightened the belt on his flannel bathrobe, and carefully bent over until his face was about two inches from the computer.
Then, in his happiest holiday voice, he called out, "Hello, Andrea!"
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1 Comments:
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maiapinion
said...
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Fantastic!
I still remember that modem sound, hoping that the darn thing would actually connect. I had a little chant I made up that I was sure helped "Go through and connect, go through and connect".
I'm glad I don't have to do that any more. I'm pretty sure I looked very sily.
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