Tuesday, November 15, 2011

My Chatting Days

Christine's reminder that she and I have known each other for 14 years made me: one, take pause, and two, start to reminisce.

Today, with a coworker, somehow we got on the topic of chatting back in our college days (although she is quite younger than me), and using instant messaging systems as well, like AIM or ICQ (well, at least she was young enough to have used that). I told her I first started IMing on Apache -- anyone remember THAT?! *LOL* Wow.

It wasn't so much the chatting, which was a lot of fun, but the type of chatting. I frequented sites where there was a lot of roleplaying going on. Usually in the fantasy vein. It was free-form, text-based, and it was so much fun. I would stay up for hours and hours playing. My writing skills improved so much during that time! First off, I had the chance to develop my own character (or characters), really delving into deep stories, partly due in thanks to some fabulous RPers I could play off of. Also, since it was constantly updating/refreshing (unlike a forum), I had to be on my toes. You never know what the other players were going to do! Sometimes I tried to push and prod to a desired outcome, but sometimes it just wouldn't happen. Oh! And a lot of this happened during dialup days, so there would be many times when our connection would drop us! Talk about being left hanging! *LOL*

But, as with any community, there was drama behind the scenes (yes, some involved romance), and sometimes it was just personalities that butted heads. Although, some of those people that I had the most friction with when I first started RPing, are some that I was the closest to for awhile.

And some I am still friends with, in some shape or form, like Christine, Charles, or Richard. ^_^

And others, others just sort of dropped off the face of the earth and I still do miss them -- is that weird? The one I think of the most often is this one guy I met. I think he was a senior in high school, and I had already graduated from college, or was about to, when we started RPing. I think he went by the name Samhain (or, at least, one of his more well-known characters). We had a great little friendship. He was like a little brother, although sometimes I suspected he might have had a slight crush on me (but that's just my opinion). I want to say his real name was something like Jason? Even though we had a nice friendship, he didn't share much of his personal life, which was probably smart. I also remember he had a twin brother, and they both were gonna play soccer in college? I remember him sort of dropping off the face of the earth, and then life went on, I stopped chatting, but once in awhile I would stop in and see if anyone I knew had been by (because you could leave private messages for the other person). And I saw a message he had left me ... but it was months and months old. I responded, but ... never heard back from him. So, Samhain, if you ever come across this, Reeny wants to know how you're doing? ^_^

Oh, man, I just remembered another person: Korbeau. Oh, he was a dreamy writer. AND British. I think he called me once, leaving a message. Ah, the accent..... *dreamy sigh*

Dang, now I'm dredging up all these memories! Wow, I wish we could get a reunion together with all the old chatting people -- online, of course, and reminisce. Only they would truly understand, I think. I know, I can't really go back to those days, and I don't have time to, but, it's nice to remember them fondly.

2 comments:

Charles Gramlich November 16, 2011 at 8:19 AM  

I do definitely remember those days. What an eclectic bunch of folks got together, but everyone was so creative.

Christine Rains November 16, 2011 at 9:12 PM  

Ah, to have a TG reunion! *chuckles* I still sometimes think of you as Reeny. I miss those days too. I don't get a chance to role-play online any more.

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