Sometime in grade school I became fascinated with mythology and the similarities between Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse. Later on, I began to notice some similarities to Christianity; bear in mind that at this time I was a ‘sage’ pre-teen at best.
Pandora’s Box was a Greek myth and paralleled Eve (and the apple) in a few ways. Both ladies were the first women on Earth and had an insatiable curiosity. Eve ate the apple that brought sin into the world (of course Adam took the blame). Pandora opened the box and all of “the god’s” evils spilled out and she became frightened so she immediately closed the box which trapped ‘hope’ inside (another punishment).
This ties into the advice of the marriage counselor that said I needed a hobby after the fiasco with the Tennessee Two-Step; she suggested getting a computer for a hobby, a modern-day box straight from Pandora. This box of plastic & sand by Packard Bell intimidated me. It was far fancier than what I had at work (they had 5.25 floppy drives; this one had a 3.5 floppy!). Once I discovered that I could play other games besides solitaire and that I could play on the internet – the hook was set. Of course, I had to rationalize it with El; the kids could use internet access on the computer for school stuff – and they did.
I don’t recall how long it took, but it didn’t take too terribly long for me to overcome my fear of electronics to the point that I had built another computer and had the two of them networked so the kids & I could play Command & Conquer against each other. On the dark side, I don’t recall either how long it took me to transform this hobby tool of knowledge into something I could use to search for porn. Back then porn required money and I stumbled on free sources through email of all places. Not with people, but some weird thing called ‘newsgroups’ where people posted pictures. Bear in mind that this also occurred in the time period that cable TV was just that; no internet. You had to find your own ISP (internet service provider) and connect using a ‘dial-up modem.’ I had an interesting conversation with AT&T one day when our (landline) phone bill was $300 higher than normal. When searching for the ever-elusive free porn, I clicked on a link for a ‘free picture viewer,’ which didn’t work and I closed the page. Yet I was dumb enough to try it again and got the same result. AT&T informed me that what had happened was the link that I had clicked had turned the sound off on my dial-up modem. Then somehow the link had my modem call Moldovia Russia and that’s how my phone bill went sky high. Explaining that to El was interesting.
In the meantime, El discovered that her younger brother in Tally town had got himself wrapped up in something called “ICQ.” Some chat thing on the internet and the something was another woman; not the woman he was married to. ICQ (I Seek You) became my new vice. The computers were upstairs in the loft which overlooked the living room. El would sit and watch TV every night, and I would game/ICQ. On a few occasions, she would call up to me and ask me to join her on the couch. Which I did try for a handful of times until I grew aggravated at only being allowed to talk during commercials; otherwise, I would be “shushed.” Something else that I allowed to become a wedge between El & me.
Off to the next chapter…in The Great Divide.
Or back to the previous blog Tennessee Two-Step.
babychristian55 