International House of Kumquats

Everyone posting about myspace lately has made me wonder what the attraction for me is. I'm not making new friends or looking for someone to date. I don't read the bizarre novel chapters sent to me by one of my "friends" every single day. Because my connection is so slow, I can't even see the funny clip of the burger king that's on my page.

But I think we all crave some sense of connection from the internet. Since 1994 or so we've been told that it's bringing people together, making the world smaller, the internet superhighway!! We want to map out our own space and use that space to proclaim ourselves and connect with others. I really do think that we think of the internet in terms of connections. I think that's why myspace and friendster are so popular; the way in which you get to collect your own connections.

My first internet connection was in 1994. It was a bbs (remember those?) in the DC area called IHOK (int'l house of kumquats) run by an awesome guy named Geoffrey Claussen. His handle was Pickle. Because of the beauty of google, I looked up it's old address in the (then mysterious cyber world):
202-537-0556
International House of Kumquats, Intl House of Kumquats
(1993-1996) Geoffrey Claussen WWIV

You had to dial into it with your modem (my friend Kim called in on an actual 300bps modem. Posts came onto the screen letter by letter. I'm not even kidding). It was incredible. I have no memory at all of how I found it or learned to use it, but it defintely changed my life. I met this group of amazing, intelligent, artistic, thoughtful kids from all around the DC area, people I would otherwise have never met. So much of my taste developed during that time, just being exposed to what these people were into and getting to post about it, endlessly, on IHOK. I mean, like all groups of teenagers, we had sex and gossip and all that, but I still remember it as something purer, something I felt I needed.

I have to give my parents credit for even letting me do it. People were a lot more afraid of strangers then, I think. There was no real internet yet; we weren't accustomed to the idea of meeting people that way. The first time all the ihokians got together (these events were called 'kumquasia') I was actually allowed to go to DC by myself and meet a bunch of strangers. Once, on the 4th of July, I was allowed to host kumquasia at my house, a big co-ed sleepover in the basement. Yeah, my parents were cool.

I miss those guys. Some I've been able to track down over the years, but others, honestly, I can't remember their real names. Or sometimes I'll remember parts, but not enough.

Old ihok members, come and find me! I was Tig and I miss you all!

Googling Returns to its Place of Honor in my Life

Hooray! I found my camp-best-friend from 1988!!!

Seriously, I have been looking for this girl for 10 years. I was actually going to post her name on the blog so that if she googled herself she's find me. She's an elusive one! But it turns out, she just graduated from the University of Florida with her MFA in fiction. How weird is that?

Nikki was just one of those people who made a really big impression on me when we were very young. We both went to Camp Echo Trail, a girl scout camp in Pennsylvania. I actually had to pay dues and be a girl scout until I was 16 so that I could continue to attend this camp. I'm sure it was run of the mill as girl scout camps go; I went to a couple, and they were all pretty much alike, but I always loved Echo Trail the best. It was huge and far away from home...there's still a part of Greenfield Lake near the boat rentals that smells like woods and latrines in the hot sun that takes me back instantly to camp.

I was so in my element there--the first time I went, I was 8 and I went for a week. My mom carefully packed me a day's worth of clothes in a plastic baggie for each day that I would be there, but I never went past the top layer of my duffle bag and so just wore the same thing for the whole 7 days. When I got home the "terrific tan" everyone thought I had came off in the shower. It was dirty and messy and dramatic and intense the way only young girls can be when living in tents together away from home for weeks at a time. Nikki was from Pennsylvania, and she was my summer friend for about 6 years. We always arranged to be in the same program each summer and she came to embody to me the whole meaning and pleasure of camp. I was so sorry when we lost touch.

And so Google is redeemed. It may have told me that my ex-husband is sick, but it delivered Nikki back to me and with her my very first pinnacle moment--

It's the greenest summer in the woods--shady and lush--and our unit is having a cookout. Nikki and I are standing at the top of the hill looking down at the rest of the campers--our counsellors are grilling hamburgers on a charcoal grill, there's a swing set, the rest of the girls are running around and screaming. Someone calls to us and Nikki takes my hand and we run down the hill toward everyone else...and in that moment, I just know that she's my best friend forever and that I will never be happier than this.

Googling Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

One of the darker parts of the internet--you know, besides child porn--is how easy it is to find out things that you don't really need to know. We're always extolling the virtues of "having the world at our fingertips," but sometimes I think we were better off before. Relationships ended, people went their separate ways, and all you could think was, "Hmm. I wonder what ever happened to that person." And then only if you were nostalgic and felt like thinking that. Oh, occasionally your great aunt Ruth might run into someone's step-nephew and you'd hear something through the grapevine, but you never had to really know how your ex's were doing, hear their words just the way they would say them, see their pictures....you know.

I love looking up old Girl Scout camp friends, talking to weird people from highschool who never talked to me then but for some reason want to befriend me now, and seeing how that dweeb I dated when I was 14 is doing. But the power of Google can run away with a person.

Mostly what you find is that so-and-so got married and has 2.5 kids and 1.4 dogs. You see the wedding album and it tugs your heart a bit. You think semi-catty thoughts about their current spouse and you feel a little lost for a day. But what if you find out that something is really, really wrong...and there's absolutely nothing you can do to help? Nothing you could say that wouldn't make things worse, no way to cross back into who you were to take care of the person you loved then?

I think it's obvious I'm feeling a little melancholy. Mostly it's for my friend and partly for myself and a long ago girl who tried so hard to be a grown up and failed.