WordPress asks today:

The most important invention in your lifetime is…

and a shrill voice in my mind screams:

“Modern indoor plumbing!”

but then I considered, well, that wasn’t invented in my lifetime.

I am lucky enough to have been able to enjoy cleaning my butt with toilet paper and flushing it away my whole life, so that doesn’t count.

Well, the next answer was obvious to me:

The Internet.

I have a horrible memory.

I don’t remember core moments of my life like a normal person does.

I don’t remember the first time I ever got my period, I don’t remember the faces of my aunts, uncles, and cousins that I haven’t seen in decades, I don’t remember most of high school, I don’t remember my daughter’s first words.

Sometime in the mid-nineties I logged onto the internet for the first time on the big ass Gateway computer my parents let me put in my bedroom.

Perhaps that was a poor choice, parents.

The sound of the dial-up is certainly one I can’t forget, or that universal voice most of us probably remember cheerily announcing:

“You’ve got mail!” when AOL finally connected.

I was seventeen when I lost my virginity to a college student I’d met on the internet in an alt.gothic usenet forum in 1998 – I was two years younger than my daughter is now and a junior in high school and although the experience was fine, the thought of it happening is horrifying.

Sorry again, parents!

Being on the internet in those formative years shaped the trajectory of my life.

I began hand-coding websites and writing online as soon as it was possible to do so, and now I kick myself in the ass for not pushing myself to make it a career, cause if I had, I’d probably be retiring in ten or fifteen years.

Still, my life and livelihood are thanks to the internet’s existence.

A little over five years ago, I met Bobby – my favorite thing I’ve ever found on the internet.

If truth be told he found me, but still, the sentiment is the same.

My memory may be poor, but I’ll never forget the excitement I felt in the first couple of weeks of messaging online.

I’ll never forget feeling like he brought me back to life.

Meeting him is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, and it wouldn’t have happened without the internet.

We never would have found each other.

When we met, I was starting to believe I’d never find love and I’d be alone forever.

Thank you, internet, for proving me wrong.