Born to be a geek

When I was a girl I think I dreamed of the internet. (Whilst, obviously I still look 19, the world wide web was absolutely non-existent when I was a child – nearest thing I had was an Etch-A-Sketch).

I was desperate to communicate with people, preferably not smelly boys like my two younger brothers, but proper humans who lived in exotic foreign countries… like Holland and Canada! I tried the whole pen-pal thing. Like junior lonely-hearts. But how are you supposed to strike gold people-wise when you only know someones age and home town? It was cumbersome and labourious and I was too inexperienced in life to have much to say that would interest non-family members (or so I believed). If I could have found someone who was interested in the same combination of things as me to start with (rabbits, The Famous Five, laundering dolls clothes and hanging them on my own little washing line, keeping my toys safe from destructive siblings, cola cubes, shrinkie-dinks, french knitting, lego, hop-scotch), then things could have been so different!

My favourite toy was a post-office set. Oh, how I loved it. The play money, the sheets of stamps, the stationery sets and rubber-stamps (I wish I still had it)! I wrote letters to people I’d made up in my head. I told them all my secrets and all the hugely entertaining things I’d been up to during the week. I’d seal them up, attach a toy-land stamp (1st class of course), rubber stamp the envelope then mail it on my way to school to a totally made-up address.

I wonder if anyone at the Royal Mail ever read my letters? If anyone did I am sure they were very, very junior and very, very bitter about utilising their time in such a pointless way. I’m sure it’s more likely they went into a giant shredder along with all the letters to Father Christmas.

I think if I’d had the internet when I was growing up I would be a very different person today. Or maybe not. I could have communicated with real people who knew exactly where I was coming from. I could have found out that I wasn’t the only seven year old that liked to believe they’d been swapped at birth with a member of the royal family (for security purposes). When I was eleven I could have discovered that having really curly hair wasn’t the end of the universe and that it could actually look quite attractive with a little effort. And at fourteen I could have found out what a proper, grown-up mans rude-bits looked like without having the fright of my life during a disco at the church youth-club! (A whole other story).

So, in short, this blogging thing was made for me, and it means I can stop bothering the postal service with nuisance mail!Hoorah.