Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I came in here to the office to play around on the computer awhile. Thinking about an old friend of mine, who I'll call Jerry, I decided to log onto AOL and see if he was in the chat room he could always be found in...the one he helped create. I haven't spoken to Jerry in a little over a year, but I miss him sometimes. I met him in 2002 and that's a whole other story, but let's just say that yes, I do know him in person. Anyway, it was about 1:00 AM when I logged into AOL. I hardly ever log into AOL anymore. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

So I go into the chat room and ask if "VOODOO" still comes in there. That's his screen name, it never varies, it's always something with VOODOO in it. Immediately, some girl with the screen name of "peggy dew ldle" or something says, "who are you?" Figuring this to be a reasonable question, since chat room folk are quite protective of their regulars, I immediately reply, "Well, my name is Sondra and I've known him for about three years. He was friends with one of my best friends, Heather, who died." This was sort of a convoluted version of the truth, but close enough. I don't like to reveal too much to chat room people, especially AOL people. She comes back at me IMMEDIATELY with, "Well, Dem is his girlfriend and she really doesn't like people taking her man." Shocked, I scanned the room list and sure enough, there was a screen name with "Dem" in it. Feeling a little angry, I shot back, "Well, I'm just here looking for him because he was once a good friend of mine. But Dem doesn't have to worry--I'm married!" I added an "LOL" to add an air of humor to the statement, hoping that peggy whatsherface would back off. Just then, Dem started talking. At first, I thought she was talking to me, but it turns out she was talking to peggy. I sat there and watched the chat roll up the screen for about five minutes. She completely ignored me, but her and that peggywhatsit got into a five minute conversation about---I kid you not---the logistics of shooting candy, mostly M&M's, out of their butts. Dem made the comment that she "hit him in the eye once." I sat there blinking at my screen. I mean, I'm almost thirty. Is this the way people still talk? I talked like that before adolescence, when I thought it was funny. At thirty, it's not funny, it's stupid. I just sat there watching this when peggy whoseewhatsherface says, "See Sondra, you can't do those kinds of things for Jerry, only Dem can, so you better try to find another man to steal." I said, "LISTEN, YOU DUMB BITCH. I ALREADY TOLD YOU I'M ONLY HERE BECAUSE HE WAS ONCE A FRIEND OF MINE. I AM MARRIED. THAT'S ALL." Then I clicked the send button without realizing a very important thing: These are AOL people I'm talking to.

Believe me, there is a difference. I think the miscreants, deviants, and the borderline retarded members of our society congregate on AOL. I'm not talking about people who use the server for their email or even some people who use AOL for journal writing or other things. (I use it for the AOL radio..very good stuff.) I'm talking about people whose sole purpose in paying for AOL is to be able to interact with other people who need excessive amounts of attention. They sit in chat rooms, put each other down, harass each other, stalk each other, and act as if they know each and every person in the room as an individual. This may be true in some cases, but in most cases they are just lonely, needy slobs sitting in front of a computer who found a way to connect to thousands of other people just like them. And then they gang up on the people who don't follow their little AOL culture, making people's lives absolutely miserable. I have a friend who is profesionally employed, and after getting into an argument with one of the AOL chat room deviants, she found out where he worked, his last name, his office number, his phone number, and other various little pieces of information, which she then passed out to the other members of the room, who then began a month long rally of harassment to my friend. He didn't back down or show fear..he just began slapping them with harassment suits one by one. (One thing they forgot in their little campaign of senseless harassment: he is an attorney.) But he still had to take the time to trace phone numbers and get addresses for these people in order to serve them, not to mention the money it must have cost him to hunt them down, since most of them were not in his state. He called me and I listened to some of the messages they left him...a giggling gaggle of idiots that had nothing of real value to say, just called his machine and giggled and breathed into it. And these are grown people we're talking about, not adolescents or children. GROWN FOLK. Sickening.

So after I sent that message stating my position and realizing it would do no good---peggy is probably the reigning grand dame of that room and avoidance of reality is her specialty---I sent one more message, something about "who has time for this shit? fuck off" and signed off. I half expected to see an email from Jerry today but there wasn't one. Not that he owes me an apology, he doesn't act like that. At least I've never seen him act like that. And I know him in real life. He's a mellow, laid back, "I don't give a damn" kind of guy. But if those are the kinds of girls he's attracted to, then perhaps I'm better off without the stress of dealing with an overzealous, irrationally jealous AOL girlfriend. It's just not worth it.