Net Friends & More

  Jennifer’s brother Tom was visiting from Chicago and staying with them for a month or two. He was celebrating his 20th birthday, so Lori and I went over to Jen and Bill’s apartment. Unfortunately, Jennifer was pregnant and was not really up to celebrating. We offered to take Tom out. We really didn’t have a plan. After we picked him up, Lori mentioned that there was a bar at her college campus that usually didn’t check I.D.s. Honestly, I just wanted to go out because it was the annual ‘Guiness Toast’ that evening.

  Lori was right. They didn’t check I.D.s and Tom got to drink at the bar for his 20th birthday. Not only that, he was given free drinks by the bartender for his birthday when he was going around telling them it was his 22nd birthday. I was absolutely shocked he was so brash. He barely looked his own age, let alone over 21, but here he was. When we finally got him out of there he was trashed. We pretty much had to carry him back up the stairs to his sister’s apartment.

  He was a mess and even though we were a little bit shocked, Jennifer was not and just mildly annoyed at him.  

  Besides the Guiness Toast, I guess the other reason I wanted to go out was because it was getting harder and harder to get others to hang out. Jen and Bill were expecting their first child. Eric and Lucinda were having another kid. Alan barely was allowed out of his house. The truth was, socially, my life was becoming stagnant.

   What was becoming popular were social network sites around this time. Amanda from work had mentioned them to me and I read an article in the newspaper about ‘Friendster’. These, I though, were a great way to stay in contact with my friends back in NY and elsewhere. So I joined them. I started to join any social network site I could find to see if there was one I liked best. One of these sites was for online penpals called Netfrendships or something like that. It was at this web site that I first met Miss Elaine. The website wasn’t what I’d say user friendly, but it did have cute features where you could buy ‘gifts’ for your new online friends. To me, chatting with strangers online was a novelty and hadn’t taken it seriously, but not since I first moved to Colorado and chatted with Mandy online did I really find someone I looked forward to chatting with, but I had. Elaine and I would chat for hours online. Long after the Netfriends website we met up on was shut down.