Many people joke that they peaked in high school and have only gone downhill since then. I am one of these people, except I believe my peak was in grade school.
Aside from having braces, a greasy middle-part, and acne, I was killing the game in middle school. How, you ask? AOL Instant Messenger -- that is how. I believe that everyone proudly remembers their screen name during this period of life. Well, mine was boardchic727 (my account is still active if you want to add me). For those of you laughing because you assume I was a board-game fanatic, the true meaning behind my screen name is even more embarrassing.
Around age 10, I learned how to snowboard. When I say learned, I mean I was able to strap a board onto my feet and go flying down a bunny hill until I stopped myself by either face-planting or running into another human being or stationary object. In my mind, this level of expertise was worthy of the title boardchic.
Now that we’ve cleared up the ambiguity of my screen name, we can now move onto addressing a typical conversation on AIM. It usually opened with a clever pick-up line such as, “Hey what’s up?” Grade school was just a more romantic time. From there, the conversation continued somewhat like this:
soccerdude007: Hey what’s up?
boarchic727: Nm. U? (I always wanted to remain a mystery to my suitors.)
soccerdude007: Same lol.
boarchic727: Do u like anyone? (I would never ask a guy this now, but I was such a baller in grade school that I didn’t care.)
soccerdude007: U.
boardchic727: Wanna be bf/gf? (I usually got around three boyfriends a night, and we would acknowledge it by playing Four Square together the next day at recess.)
soccerdude007: Ya. Ok gtg-dinner.
boardchic727: By. Ily.
Soccerdude007: Ily 2.
And that’s how it went. Even when none of my boyfriends were online, I still had plenty of robots I could talk to which was equally as fun. I think we all remember SmarterChild’s one-line zingers.
When I wasn’t wheeling boys with gelled hair and graphic tees, I was usually updating my status. The AIM status was created simply to tell people whether or not you were available to chat, but it essentially turned into the 2000s version of Twitter.
Statuses were pretty standard. You were either expressing your angst via a Blink-182 quote, or you were pretending to be away until the person you wanted to talk to came online. You then waited a few minutes to come back online; this way, it wasn’t obvious that you had been staring at your computer screen for hours waiting for your crush to become available.
Most people are tremendously embarrassed by their days of AIM. I, however, wish I could be as cool as boardchic was. I will never forget her. I will never forget the buddy list, the away messages, and the annoying door slamming or door opening noise that indicated someone signing off or on. I will never forget AOL Instant Messenger, and you shouldn’t either because that was our true peak.
OkAy WeLL I gTg-ByE!
