Some people can say they remember when TV was invented. Others remember the first records. I am proud of the fact that I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I was there for the debut of email.
It was August 1995. I was a freshman in college when my dad told me about it. “Email?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“It means electronic mail,” he said. “You have got get an email address!” He’s had an email address so long that the year “95” is still part of his email address. I’ve never thought of my parents as early adopters so it’s really extraordinary that they were the first people I knew to get email. I mean, they didn’t even get a cable-ready TV until a few years after they got email.
My dad hounded me about it for weeks. I remember thinking, “What do I need with one of these things?” But then I figured out that I could get one through school. I still didn’t know exactly how to go about it so one day, while I was over at my friend’s dorm, the IT guy there said he would help us set up our email addresses. He was typing all the stuff into his computer and he said, “What do you want your password to be?” Since we were all about to go to the pool, I was holding my beach towel with a Disney character on it. I looked at the towel and said, “Jasmine!” He made my password “Jasmine” and do you know that every single password I’ve had for the last 15 years has had “Jasmine” in it? (By the way, it’s not actually Jasmine. I didn’t think it was smart to post my actual password.)
The only way I could check email in college was to go to the library and get on a waiting list for a computer. Can you imagine doing that now?
I remember thinking it was so weird when I got out into the workforce and people would email me when they were three cubes away. And all business was conducted over email. I could barely keep up with all the messages. Luckily, I had access to a computer and didn’t have to wait in line.
This is gonna be good stuff for the grandkids! But Great Grandpa Ron will have the best story of all. He can say he was the FIRST person (well, the first in our family) to have email. That’s totally better than a story about walking to school in the snow, uphill, both ways.
5 comments:
And now e-mail is obsolete, at least to younger people. I just can't get into texting,tweeting, or FaceBook, so will continue corresponding by e-mail until I go to that Big Internet in the Sky.
Wow! Who would guess that this college kid who learned about email from her Baby Boomer Dad would one day communicate with the world through her THREE blogs!
I remember in 1992 my UT roommate had Prodigy internet, but you could only email to other people who had Prodigy. The dial-up worked only part of the time, and tied up our dorm phone line. A big deal when you didn't have cell phones!!
I saw that college freshmen starting this year don't even use email! Too slow...
So you're saying my Grandkids WON'T be impressed about my email story? It's like if I heard someone say, "I was around when the eight-track was invented!"
No your story is still impressive. My story is more about a limited messaging system, that I am sure we did not call email.
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