I Did Not Marry the Man Who Set Up my Email in College. #EmailLove (Not)

Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

So when I was challenged to come up with two topics related to email and how it was important in my life, I was overwhelmed.  So many possibilities!  Email and the Internet have been a part of my life since my freshman year in college.  I was talking about this campaign with my friend Leticia of Tech Savvy Mama when she said she was also doing it and writing about how she married the man who set up her email.  (She posted it in May and her post is here, titled, A Look Back at Email During my College Days)   I immediately knew what my first post would be – it would be how I did not marry the man who set up my college.  And it’s a damn good thing I didn’t.

Why?  Well, the man who set up my email in college was none other than Leticia’s husband.

It’s a small world indeed, and email, the Internet and websites like Facebook have served to remind so many of us of that fact.  But I knew Jim and Leticia long before blogging.  Because I met Jim on the first day of my freshman year.  My parents were still in my door room when there was a knock at the door from a nice sophomore from the Computer Center.  He introduced himself and announced he was there to hook up my Mac Classic II (my super-hot new computer) and to set me up on e-mail.  The wha?  It was the fall of 1992 and email was most certainly not mainstream or a term I knew.

I’m not kidding when I say that I really do have a vivid memory of Jim setting up my college account and showing me how to email people.  He left and it’s one of those things where I won’t forget as the Internet and email is so important to me now.  It’s a historical moment in my history, filed away with memories of where I was when the Challenger Shuttle exploded or what I was doing when the police chased down O.J.

I spent the year emailing only with my friend Amy at Syracuse.  She was the only other person who got the gist of email and started using it that year to communicate.  The following year (1993-1994) was when the rest of my friends and family seemed to catch on.

So I did not marry the man who set up my email.  But we did become fast friends and he was not only my Editor at the school newspaper for many semesters but we shared a drink or two for many years.  And it was probably in an email that he told me he was going to marry Leticia, who I had known from her many visits to Jim on campus because they were high school friends.  Then years later, I started blogging, she started blogging, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here’s a cute little video about Yahoo! Mail: