Email has become a social piranha. It disrupts the social flow. Chain emails, Spam, Viruses, email programs that rudely delete important emails before you can read them. But email will always have a very warm place in my heart. It was email that brought my husband and me together. Before Gore invented the internet, before SPAM, before instant messaging, before internet gaming, and e-dating, my husband and I developed our budding relationship by emailing epistles back and forth. If it hadn't been for email, our relationship would not have unfolded, the delicate flower that it was.
In 1988, we both worked at a large computer engineering firm. It was our first job out of school. He was a software engineer and I was a technical writer. We never worked together, but high-tech friends introduced us at a party. It was a traditional courtship in many ways. We met first for an impressive lunch at a sub shop. Then we kept running into each other at parties and the attraction was obviously there. And then there was the spectacular New Year's Eve when, on the dance floor, at midnight, I kissed him. Things started to fizzle after that. I figured I had scared him off. After all, he was an ultra geek and had bad luck with women in the past, or so a friend of a friend said. We did see each other at parties and in groups, but never alone, which can't be described as a dating situation. We did get many chances to talk, though not about personal stuff. I remember he did talk me into setting up email on my UNIX workstation. I knew the company had an intranet, but I didn't understand its potential for personal communication. I had no concept of e-poetry just as no one else did. Remember this was before anyone (was it Gore?) had invented the "e-"; as a prefix to anything done electronically.
One day, after a weekend water volleyball party, he called me. "I just sent you an email message." I had forgotten about my email account. I logged in and there it was. Because this was before Gore invented the internet, the email came through a UNIX server networked environment. Don't worry about what that means, just know that UNIX is to Windows like the cockpit of a Leer jet is to your television remote, and the computers we used were more like a HUM-V than the subcompact car-like internet device you might be using to read this blog right now. A lot more power than most of us need. I read these emails on a black screen, the ghostly white letters glowing at me in a glorious monospaced font. There were no BlackAdder or New York Times fonts to choose from. Yet the words sprang from this dull screen with the romantic vibrance of a dozen roses. I fell in love heavily and hard and we have been together ever since. So, thanks to all those university types, NASA, Al Gore, & whoever else contributed to this first network of computers. They made us who we are today.