Spam

So hooray! I'm not a spammer. Apparently my blog was being checked to be sure I wasn't. It's nice to be in the clear.

Speaking of spam, it seems as if it's almost non-existent in my online life lately. Most good ISP's have spam controls, so unless I choose to have an email address with hotmail, it's rare that something gets through the filters I have in place. Which brings me to my reverie.... back in the dark ages when I was a student, home Internet simply did not exist. We are all so thankful to Al Gore for inventing the Internet, that we rarely consider what life was like before the world wide web. Let's reflect.

As a child in the 70's, the only Spam was a pork product of some sort celebrated in a Monty Python song. The "technology" I can recall being used in our school was the mimeograph machine. When hot off the press, what an indescribable smell came from the warm, purple inked pages my teacher called "dittos". The words were often blurry, and many times the lines on crosswords were a bit wavy, but dittos were the wave of the future.... soon to make work books obsolete, according to many sources "in the know" (aka my teachers). In my class, Mike Rakoska had the enviable position of retrieving the dittos from the copy room. This was due to the fact that his grandma worked there, a situation highly inequitable for the rest of us poor slobs longing to go and inhale the mimeograph fumes all the way back to the room.

Then the 80's hit with a vengeance, bringing Atari and Pacman to every modern home. My parents refused to be modern at the time, so my Pacman and Pong had to be wheedled out of friends with more forward-thinking parents. Copy machines also evolved, and dittos became a thing of the past. The new copies were clear, sure, but where was the purple ink? Where was the wonderful smell? It had gone the way of the mimeograph. My school also installed "computers" in the library. I use quotations here for obvious reasons. Today's hand held game boys are more complex. Unlike my school, the other, wealthier, cool schools had Internet by the late 80's.

I can still remember being annoyed with my mother, a high school librarian in a neighboring town. Every night she came home talking about "modems" and the "world wide web" thereby causing my eyes to roll back in my head and my mind to wander from topic to topic as she droned on and on. My school still had the "computers" that were installed 10 years ago. I was resistant to this new Internet technology for the simple reason that I had never seen it. It was merely another annoying thing about my mother, who, during this stage of my adolescence, could also annoy me just by drinking a milk shake. I am not making this up. She had this irritating way of leaving a drip of melted milk shake on her lower lip..... ugh! I still shudder at the memory, although I doubt watching her drink one today would have the same effect. I hope.

By college, I was using computers in lieu of type writers for all the various and sundry papers I was assigned. I found them to be extremely liberating, because, joy of joys, my papers could be saved electronically and turned in for other classes and assignments! As my college career progressed, I became more and more bold. I recall saving a paper that I had received a "B-" on at the beginning of a semester, then re-submitting the same paper to the same professor for the same class and receiving an "A" the second time around. My good opinion was secured. Computers were awesome!

As the mid-90's rolled along, the Internet made its way into nearly every American home, including mine. I still remember my first piece of "spam." It said something like, "Enlarge your penis for her pleasure..." I was flabbergasted. Who would send such a thing? Was my husband visiting one of "those sights?" I had it out with him when he got home, and to his chagrin, I would not believe his confused, embarrassed, innocent look and protestations. Finally my more computer savvy friend told me that this was spam. Spam? Not the pork product, evidently, but similarly distasteful in its overall effect.

As I find no tidy way to tie this all up in a concise conclusion, let me say that I'm thankful I have been cleared of the charges laid at my door. I'm not a spammer, and I'm glad. But I do miss those warm, purple, scented dittos.