Lol an AIM conversation could look like a ransom note made entirely out of middle-school confidence. Neon green letters, a black background, and a font so tiny the other person needed to lean into the monitor just to read hey. Then somebody replied in enormous pink Comic Sans and suddenly you were having a typography argument instead of a conversation. No read receipts needed. If.....

Lol you could sneak over to the computer without making a sound, then AOL would yell YOU’VE GOT MAIL through two beige speakers loud enough to notify the neighbors. Apparently the inbox had an announcement to make. The volume knob was right there, but somehow you only remembered it after the damage was done. One instant message later, the whole house knew your very private.....

Lol we used to open Disk Defragmenter and watch little colored squares move around like the computer was cleaning its bedroom. No music. No plot. Just a beige box getting its life together while you supervised. You would sit there thinking, yeah, put that blue one over there. Finally, some order. Meanwhile your actual bedroom looked like somebody had defragmented it with a leaf blower.

The family computer lived in the busiest room in the house, so every AIM conversation came with an audience. You could minimize a window in half a second, but somehow your mom always walked by right as somebody sent something ridiculous. Then your brother needed it for homework. Funny how homework always sounded exactly like Counter-Strike. Your entire social life was now on hold because.....

Picking a screen name started with something simple like CoolKid. Taken. CoolKid1? Taken. Twenty minutes later you were xXCoolKid8472Xx, like the internet had assigned you a prison number. Then you had to tell somebody your name out loud. “Little x, big X, CoolKid, eight four seven two, big X, little x.” By the time they added you, it was time to get off the computer.

The cursor would start moving like it had somewhere else to be, so you’d flip the mouse over and take the ball out. Inside: three rollers wearing tiny sweaters made entirely of desk lint. Scrape the gunk off, put it back together, and suddenly you were an IT professional. The repair bill was zero dollars and one deeply disgusting fingernail.

Lol we had a whole computer in front of us and would just sit there watching pipes grow across the screen. No objective. No score. Just plumbing. Then somebody moved the mouse and ruined the whole damn thing. Apparently this was enough entertainment before we needed twelve apps open at once.

Nothing built trust issues like a Windows progress bar. Two minutes remaining. Forty minutes remaining. About 39 years remaining. You’d sit there afraid to touch the mouse like moving it would somehow fuck up the entire transfer.