[Soft*Silver]

My mother wanted me to go to college to become a writer. She bought me a brothers typewriter with a corrector key on it, that also had word processing features. I was hot shit! Then a friend of mine told me about the computer he had just purchased and rained on my parade. Butt head! LOL

I fought getting a computer but the butch I was married to for 7 years was computer savvy. He was a scheduler in a plant and his job had been computerized. I remember we went computer shopping together and I couldnt understand the differences. There were alot of numbers being thrown out there in the descriptions (I still feel this way when I go to buy a new one!) They were all the same color. And the bigger the screen, the better the quality.

until it became, the smaller the screen, the more expensive it was.

and then there was the battle over mac or PC. I bought one of those colored Macs because I wanted something other than putty colored. I have ADD so I couldnt stick with the transition and sold it on ebay.

Oh yes..ebay. I remember when it was FUN. You could go on there and find obscure used things that would have taken you a lifetime of antiquing or garage saleing to find. Now its all businesses and frankly, most of it is new junk.

I started out on aol and ran up a few credit cards. Being online was $4.95 an hour. And the temptation to play around on your partner was suddenly VERY easy. Was it cheating if you cyberfisted? So many relationships broke up over this. I was so loyal to my butch. It wasnt easy. She proved how hard it was by cheating on me with a cyber fling, who together, drained my inheritance, took my daughter's college fund and put my family farm into foreclosure. A few months later she tells me she the Other Woman did the same thing to her that she had done to me and wanted to come back. Oh yes. Cyber affairs shouldnt have the same consequences she said. I said, maybe not, but breaking my heart regardless of how, does.

Obviously we didnt get back together.

My daughter went to a upper middle class school system for her kindergarten year. They bragged about how they got the kids started on computers right from the beginning of their school life. I moved her to a blue collar school system for 1st grade, and by week two, I had a call from the new teacher. She said my daughter was failing and wanted to know if she came from an inner city school. NO> I said< she came from (fill in the upper middle class school's name). She said "ah, thats why. They spend so much time teaching kids the new computer language and how to navigate that they dont bother teaching them the alphabet and basic things like numbers and colors."

After my butch husband left me for a cyber affair, I started dating on the internet. I dated ALOT. and I dated in person, not just pretend dates. I also remember Women Only rooms and how we worked so hard to keep men from stealthing into our private domains. And how there were families that developed, and they werent always part of the leather world but often had that root somewhere in their history.

I remember hearing about online college classes and degrees and thought that would never fly. It would never be seen as reputable. hah. I was wrong!

My daughter at the age of 7 could maneuver on the computer better than I could for the first year. In fact, that computer sat in my bedroom for a good six months before I would even get on it. I was scared. Oh, and I had to take out a bank loan of $3500 to get it. But I got a free printer with it.

I ran social service programs and was a therapist as well. Handwriting notes remained more personal and reflective than entering them on the computer. But the agencies made me do that shift. They could also monitor my every move. And they did. I had to record what I was doing every 15 minutes, and they could check if what i said was true. Dammit.