Ready, AIM, Fire

Back in the day, if I wasn't signed on to AIM, then my day wasn't complete. I worried and stressed for weeks about an appropriate screen name for my friends' buddy lists and agonized to write the perfectly passive aggressive away message to pull at the heart strings of the boy with unrequited feelings for me or the friend who had done me wrong. In middle school, I was HiMain1Ons (loosely translated to "high maintenance," although, fittingly, AOL wouldn't let me use a zero for the ten, so it was actually a capital "o"). Briefly I was Dreams2519, reflecting my home address and head in the clouds.

In high school I matured, so I upgraded from AOL to strictly AIM and named myself ApostrofeeS because of my affinity for grammar and the ironic misspelling of "apostrophe." I used ApostrofeeS through all of college then graduated to GChat to waste some (read: lots) at my old employer's office. Last week, however, my supervisor was on a cross country flight and had wifi and needed to chat with me about some ongoing projects. He emailed asking me to get on iChat with my AIM screen name and requested it. Begrudgingly I responded that he should add ApostrofeeS to his buddy list and to please limit his judgement for another day. He agreed to one and not the other.

And now we're AIM friends. Emoticons, away messages and all.

:-)

;-)

:-*