Logging in ... Your first screen name

I feel fortunate to remember life before the internet. I can recall, in my first few months at college, being astounded at all the students carrying cell phones — and this was pre-smartphone, so we're talking about those Nokia candybars or at best a T-Mobile Sidekick. Likewise, I can remember the first CD player we had in the house (a boombox which I promptly laid claim to), and I can remember — albeit vaguely — getting a "family" desktop PC.

This must have been sometime around 1995 or early 1996 — something I only know because my older sister had a habit of making mixed CDs instead of sending Christmas cards. That year she also added a video to the holiday CD-R: The Jesus vs Santa version of The Spirit of Christmas (aka the first South Park). I have concrete memories of begging my father to leave the room so I could play it for a friend without having to be embarrassed about Cartman screaming obscenities in front of him. He insisted on staying, and wound up laughing just as hard as we did.

It was also around this time that I had to create a screen name. How else was I going to log into all those extremely interesting AOL Chat Rooms? (Raise of hands if you remember endlessly asking for a/s/l and trying to search for dirty words on the pre-Google versions of the internet).

For my first screen name, I opted to go with my middle name (a smart move for an underage internet newbie). I can also clearly recall looking outside to the late 80's Accord I was driving at the time and using the last three numbers from the license plate to distinguish myself from the myriad other registered users with a similar user name.

A picture of me, right around the same time I created my first user name.

The result? Brianne433 — hilariously enough, it's still active although I only log into the account a few times a year to clear out the 4,591 spam emails it receives. So why do I keep it? For a while it was a way to keep contact with old friends, but now it exists more or less entirely as a backup and a reminder of my early internet experiences. Oh, the nostalgia.