Her: “Hey, who’s in here”?
Me: “Jon, who are you”?
Her: “Blueberry. How old are you”?
Me: “16, how old are you”?
Her: “13”
Me: “I’m just kidding, I’m only 14.”
Her: “Then why did you lie”?
Me: “I dunno, I guess cuz you sounded older”.
It was such
a simple, 30 second conversation. But it would end up spiraling into a series of events that would have such an enormous influence on my life.
I had this exact type of conversation probably a hundred times with a hundred different people since I had first been introduced to the party line. The party line was a local telephone number that you could call and be connected to to several people at once. They actually still exist, (www.talkee.com) although I haven't called it since I was a child.
It was May of 1997, so the internet and their assortment of online chat rooms were not yet the norm. The party line provided a primitive platform for different chat rooms and social networking via the telephone. It was a way to connect with total strangers at anytime of day, and I became instantly addicted. Suddenly, I began to spend hours upon hours on the telephone. My parents were either at work, the bar, or sleeping, so they never noticed any change in my behavior. The party line was a great time waster, and it was a lot of fun. There was something mysterious and intriguing about having no idea who you were chatting with. It was kind of like reading a book instead of watching the movie, because you could use your own imagination a bit. The conversations were entertaining because you could pull no punches. Just like in modern online chat rooms, there were no consequences for your words.
This particular, by chance conversation with Blueberry, ended up lasting for about a half hour. The next day, I ended up connecting with her again by chance and chatting for a few hours. The party line had a number of chat "rooms", so you could bounce around into an assortment of conversations at any time you wanted. If the people in one particular room were boring or uninteresting, you could quickly switch to a different one by the touch of a button. There was also a feature that allowed you to chat privately with another user. And before I knew it, Blueberry and I began chatting privately everyday. Now, one might wonder why we wouldn't just call each others house if that were the case. Well, the party line was connected to other party lines, so all of the users were not necessarily local.
Blueberry lived in the Syracuse area, about an hour and a half away from me. Therefore, if I were to call her house, my mothers phone bill would have been charged long distance fees. This would have turned into a big problem because our conversations ended up becoming longer and more frequent. My mom would have killed me. Our phone bill would have skyrocketed through the roof if we hadn't been chatting through the party line platform.
As the spring became summer, I was on the phone chatting with her more and more frequent. Although I was chatting with her in private rooms on the party line, I was no longer addicted to the party line. What I had become addicted to was chatting with her. There were times when we basically chatted on the phone together all day.
In my mind, she was just the most perfect girl that god ever created. She was sweet, hilarious, quick-witted, caring, and honest. I talked to her on the phone for hours every day because she was always entertaining. It never mattered what we were talking about, usually it was just silly nonsense. As the days turned to weeks and months, school had started back up again, so we only chatted after school.
I have always had a ton of friends, so it was weird to have such a close friend that I never actually hung out with. As our friendship continued to grow, almost a year had passed. I had fallen in love with her, and I would tell her and she would say it back. It wasn't a 'romantic' type of love, it was the close friendship type. We just had a bond where we could tell each other anything without being judged. This is an invaluable asset to have at your disposal, especially for teenagers with the challenges they face due to growing pains.
My love for her wasn't some type of superficial love based on looks or popularity, it was her personality alone. That was the beauty of it and that's how I knew it was very special. I had no idea what she looked like and I didn't care. "A beautiful girl will one day lose her looks. But I good woman will always be a good woman".
We would sometimes try to describe what we looked like to each other. However, based on her self descriptions, I could never tell if she was ugly or just very self conscious about herself. One day we decided to send each other pictures of ourselves in the mail. I was very self conscious about my looks back then too, so I was really worried about it affecting our friendship. Secretly, I was hoping that she was going to be unattractive so that I wouldn't be so ashamed of my own looks when she seen my photos.
I remember the day that I received her letter in the mail, my hands were shaking so bad. Even her hand writing was cute, I was terrified to open the letter. I ran with the letter up into my bedroom and closed the door. After speaking to this girl for over a year, I was finally going to get to see what she looked like. My breathing stared to speed up quite a bit as I started to very carefully open the letter without damaging any of the contents. When I pulled out the photos they were turned backwards so I could only see the back of the first photo, there were 2 total. On the back of the photo it said "This is a picture of my friends and I that I roomed with in Toronto. I am the one in the blue shirt furthest from the right. Sorry if you're disappointed". As I slowly flipped the picture over, I could feel my heart beating like a piston through the vein in my forehead.
I had this exact type of conversation probably a hundred times with a hundred different people since I had first been introduced to the party line. The party line was a local telephone number that you could call and be connected to to several people at once. They actually still exist, (www.talkee.com) although I haven't called it since I was a child.
It was May of 1997, so the internet and their assortment of online chat rooms were not yet the norm. The party line provided a primitive platform for different chat rooms and social networking via the telephone. It was a way to connect with total strangers at anytime of day, and I became instantly addicted. Suddenly, I began to spend hours upon hours on the telephone. My parents were either at work, the bar, or sleeping, so they never noticed any change in my behavior. The party line was a great time waster, and it was a lot of fun. There was something mysterious and intriguing about having no idea who you were chatting with. It was kind of like reading a book instead of watching the movie, because you could use your own imagination a bit. The conversations were entertaining because you could pull no punches. Just like in modern online chat rooms, there were no consequences for your words.
This particular, by chance conversation with Blueberry, ended up lasting for about a half hour. The next day, I ended up connecting with her again by chance and chatting for a few hours. The party line had a number of chat "rooms", so you could bounce around into an assortment of conversations at any time you wanted. If the people in one particular room were boring or uninteresting, you could quickly switch to a different one by the touch of a button. There was also a feature that allowed you to chat privately with another user. And before I knew it, Blueberry and I began chatting privately everyday. Now, one might wonder why we wouldn't just call each others house if that were the case. Well, the party line was connected to other party lines, so all of the users were not necessarily local.
Blueberry lived in the Syracuse area, about an hour and a half away from me. Therefore, if I were to call her house, my mothers phone bill would have been charged long distance fees. This would have turned into a big problem because our conversations ended up becoming longer and more frequent. My mom would have killed me. Our phone bill would have skyrocketed through the roof if we hadn't been chatting through the party line platform.
As the spring became summer, I was on the phone chatting with her more and more frequent. Although I was chatting with her in private rooms on the party line, I was no longer addicted to the party line. What I had become addicted to was chatting with her. There were times when we basically chatted on the phone together all day.
In my mind, she was just the most perfect girl that god ever created. She was sweet, hilarious, quick-witted, caring, and honest. I talked to her on the phone for hours every day because she was always entertaining. It never mattered what we were talking about, usually it was just silly nonsense. As the days turned to weeks and months, school had started back up again, so we only chatted after school.
I have always had a ton of friends, so it was weird to have such a close friend that I never actually hung out with. As our friendship continued to grow, almost a year had passed. I had fallen in love with her, and I would tell her and she would say it back. It wasn't a 'romantic' type of love, it was the close friendship type. We just had a bond where we could tell each other anything without being judged. This is an invaluable asset to have at your disposal, especially for teenagers with the challenges they face due to growing pains.
My love for her wasn't some type of superficial love based on looks or popularity, it was her personality alone. That was the beauty of it and that's how I knew it was very special. I had no idea what she looked like and I didn't care. "A beautiful girl will one day lose her looks. But I good woman will always be a good woman".
We would sometimes try to describe what we looked like to each other. However, based on her self descriptions, I could never tell if she was ugly or just very self conscious about herself. One day we decided to send each other pictures of ourselves in the mail. I was very self conscious about my looks back then too, so I was really worried about it affecting our friendship. Secretly, I was hoping that she was going to be unattractive so that I wouldn't be so ashamed of my own looks when she seen my photos.
I remember the day that I received her letter in the mail, my hands were shaking so bad. Even her hand writing was cute, I was terrified to open the letter. I ran with the letter up into my bedroom and closed the door. After speaking to this girl for over a year, I was finally going to get to see what she looked like. My breathing stared to speed up quite a bit as I started to very carefully open the letter without damaging any of the contents. When I pulled out the photos they were turned backwards so I could only see the back of the first photo, there were 2 total. On the back of the photo it said "This is a picture of my friends and I that I roomed with in Toronto. I am the one in the blue shirt furthest from the right. Sorry if you're disappointed". As I slowly flipped the picture over, I could feel my heart beating like a piston through the vein in my forehead.
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