| /me reminisces in green 03.17.03 |
| I can't even remember the meaning of St. Patrick's Day, nor do I care enough to look it up on the Internet. All I care about it is that it's an excuse for everyone to wear the best color in the world. It's refreshing to look around the office, seeing everyone decked out in their cubicles with green shirts, green dresses, green vests, green jewelry. You can bet I'm all green today! That reminds me, I need to e-mail a friend to see if his regular green visitor has made an appearance... Anyway, what do I write about today? I had some things in mind, but now as I sit down to write, I can't remember any--so I will rewind my life back to the latest thing that I remember really pondering over, and that brings me to this morning's e-mail with E. In his previous e-mail, he brought up the days "Back Then" when a large group of us from SCBC would stay up late at night, chatting on IRC, holding all-night LAN parties in friends' homes, and just doing other dorky things that centered around computers. We'd congregate in #scbc on IRC (or whichever channel we were slotted for on that particular night with the password usually being that day spelled backwards) and chat in the room, chat privately with individuals, and make new memories. When we finally kicked ourselves off the channel (or had someone else give us the boot), we went to sleep knowing that in a few hours, we'd see one another at church. When we look back at the good ol' days, there is a sense of sadness, knowing that we can never get that back. We can't stay up late like that anymore because the lack of sleep would be reflected in our next day at work. Frankly, we've gotten too old for all that stuff now. But it is so much fun to think about how the computers, that online community, played such a big role in our lives. And it wasn't so much about the community that included outsiders--strangers. It was about the community of our own friends that was already established. As more and more people from our physical church entered into the channel, we got to know them better, and behind the nick and the safety of the computer screen, we even formed tighter bonds than we would have formed just passing each other in the halls at church. I wouldn't say that this is the best way to really bond with people, but I'm not going to deny that it works to some extent. I can specifically think of some individuals that I got to know better because of those late nights on IRC. Even offline, all the IRC terms and inside jokes bonded us together. In Mexico, we kept track of our work gloves by writing our nicks on them. (Hey, Kit, give me ops!) When hanging out at Buckthorn's (before the Blue Moon days!), we'd excuse ourselves for the bathroom by saying "BRB." Even now, when I think of an action that I would perform, my initial reaction is to convey it as "/me does this." Dorky? Yes. Geeky? Possibly. Lame? Never!! Fun? For sure. Looking back on the days of Back Then, it really makes me miss it. A lot. But on a positive note, it just shows that each generation, each phase in our life, is characterized by a new form of bonding. Whether it's the same group or not, it doesn't matter. What is important is that we do find people to bond with and we do find some way to do it. IRC, ICQ, AIM, e-mail, letters, Blue Moon Caf�, Original Perry's, Shari's. Take your pick. |
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