Next year marks thirty years since I got my first computer and my first screechy modem and entered online life. I was thirty-one when I logged onto AOL using the handle HenMom. Google wasn’t a thing yet, nor was social media or YouTube. One of my first email pen pals was my Uncle Jack, my mother’s eldest sibling, thirty-four years my senior. Uncle Jack was the family character, the guy with the most interesting life and also, likely because of this, the one we kids were cautioned about. I don’t recall the specifics of the warnings, only impressionistic memories of being admonished—
I love this! I had a great uncle who was some kind of reporter in Daytona Beach -- he also wrote erotica but no one will tell me his pen name.
He was in the Navy in the Korean War. I remember him as a Shel Silverstein character. He looked like a Gay Man from Florida, long shorts, beard, tank. Later we found pictures of him and a man picnicking in Korea, their arms around each other. My mother said, "That's how good friends acted back then."
I love this! I had a great uncle who was some kind of reporter in Daytona Beach -- he also wrote erotica but no one will tell me his pen name.
He was in the Navy in the Korean War. I remember him as a Shel Silverstein character. He looked like a Gay Man from Florida, long shorts, beard, tank. Later we found pictures of him and a man picnicking in Korea, their arms around each other. My mother said, "That's how good friends acted back then."
Spike, thank you for sharing and inspiring others to do the same. My favorite icebreaker when meeting a new person is to ask them 'what's your story'?