Somewhere, out there on the internet, is a blog I started once upon a time.  I’m not sure where it is, how to sign in, etc., but I am sure that it’s still there drifting around in cyberspace.  Do I care?  Not really.  See, many times I’ve thought about writing – a few of those I started and many more than that happened in a conversation (probably at a bar) that never even made it to the stroke of a key.  I’m not that person anymore anyway – at least a large part of me is not – and for that, I am thankful. That being said, reading my drunken musings of yesteryear are not really on the top of my to-do list these days…unfortunately, someone invented TimeHop for that and on a daily basis, I get to look back and see some of the stupid shit that not only I did/wrote about – but see the evidence in photos as well!  It’s all good….. that brings me to where and who I am today.

I cannot express just how GLAD I am that the internet didn’t exist back in the 80’s.  And in the 90’s…. when Al Gore invented it – well, it was nowhere near what it is now.  Hell, I simply couldn’t wrap my head around what “IT” was – when, where, why, etc.  I remember the first thing I typed into a web address bar was http://www.delmonte.com   Why, you ask?  Because that was the first web address I had ever seen and it was on the back of a can of green beans.  “Low hanging fruit”, if you will…. and it worked!  It pulled up the prettiest, sharpest picture of the Del Monte logo I had ever seen.  I don’t think I went any further than that tho… but I certainly marveled at what “IT” did.  Kinda like the first time I saw a blinking green cursor on a computer back in grade school…. PRETTTTTYYYYY!  Look, when you’re young & single and your day consists of 8 hours of work, 3 hours at the gym, followed by your hobby of de-stemming/seeding weed in a frisbee on your couch after you eat your “healthy” single-person dinner of rice and green beans – these are the epiphanies of a 20-something in the 90’s (hey! that was 10 years ago, right?).

I’m not the first of Generation X to gladly proclaim the absence of the internet back in the day… and I won’t be the last.  Good God – look how far we’ve come!  From a cancer causing brain brick in a car at a million dollars a minute, all the way to a phone/computer that you can carry in your pocket and have an “unlimited everything” plan.  My kid thought Ferris Bueller was talking on a toy phone and just today, I had a friend post that her daughter asked her what long distance was!  Remember the “caller ID box”?  Coolest.  Thing.  Ever.

Some pretty crazy stuff occurred during those two decades…. and I was right up there – front and center, loving every minute of it!  The funny thing is – my glory stories from the days of yore almost sound more grandiose and crazy than Alice falling into the rabbit hole…. it’s rare these days, that I tell one – and Lord knows they’d be lost on the youth of today, as there is no electronic evidence of such whimsical debauchery to back me up – and for THAT – I am beyond glad LOL

To the youth/millennials/gen Yers:  revel in any anonymity that y’all possibly can… it’s really up to YOU.  All I can say is this – the rules and regulations that used to prevent a person from becoming President are clearly going to have to change for any of you to ever get to that spot!  I’m willing to bet there is already WAY too much dirt out there on each of you already to make it based on previous generations standards.  What am I thinking??? Hell, we’re already in the worst political mess I’ve yet to witness and the players are a bunch of old people just like me, that are merely assholes and/or idiots.  It ain’t gonna get any better, folks!

So yes, maybe one of these days – my kids or their friends may find some historic, cave-like scrawling or *gasp* paper photograph of me before I was the ancient relic I have become.  And yes, I DO know that once this publishes, they will know about the frisbee… and trust me, that’s the LEAST of my past worries.  Because what happens on the internet, stays on the internet…..

Until later ~

AshGenX