Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

The First Time I Met Amy Gallagher

This past weekend, Rachel and I hosted a gathering of some friends we'd met on-line. For most of them, this was a new experience -- reconciling real faces and voices with the profile built up in one's mind, based solely on what they had written online. For me, it was anything but new. As recently as last June, I met up with other bloggers (man I hate that term!) at the studios of KRON here in San Francisco. (I'm on the left side of the photo, in the "nerd" t-shirt.) It goes way back, much further than that, though. Travel back with me, if you will, to a simpler time, before the internet was a household word and Fido was king.

The year was 1983 or maybe 1984 or 1985 even; it doesn't matter so much, really. Back then, there was no DSL nor cable modems. Broadband was not an everyday term but, if it were, it would have referred to a 1200bps modem -- more than four times slower than telephone modems today and more than 300 times slower than the slowest DSL connection currently offered by SBC/AT&T. That means that this web page would take about three minutes to download (on a good day), once you clicked on the link to get here. It would be a lot worse if I included any photos or graphics. I was probably cruising along at 300bps, four times slower still. It's okay, though. There was no world wide web back then. Everything was done via Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's) which were somewhat analogous to discussion forums some websites have.

Fido was the dominant BBS at the time and, through FidoNet, allowed e-mail to be sent to any other Fido user anywhere in the world. I was a user of a BBS called The Skateboard, along with a great group of folks -- Bruce (who ran it), Kip, Linda, Robert, and Amy. Although there were definitely more men than women, there were quite a few females frequenting this BBS. Amy Gallagher was one of them. Although many of us were single, there was very little in the way of real dating going on (there were other BBS's just for that). Lots of flirting, but little else. (Although, there was one girl that I and several others would have gladly gotten involved with, if she had ever allowed anyone to get that close to her.) Anyway, Amy was just one of the gang, but we definitely appreciated the diversity that she and the other women brought to the group.

We decided at some point that it would be cool to meet face-to-face. At the time, my father did audits for many chapters of the Salvation Army, including the Chinatown Corps. At the time, the Chinatown office had a restaurant school located in the basement where they taught immigrants to cook and work in a restaurant. Once or twice a year, they held a fundraiser where the students cooked and served people, demonstrating their new skills. We often went because it was good for business and good food. I suggested this as a venue for our gathering.

I arrived with my family, a little late as usual. I walked into the dining room and looked around to see if I could spot my online friends. Amidst the uniform sea of chinese faces was a single table with a handful of non-asians. I figured that had to be them and went over. Sure enough, it was. Someone made the introductions, going around the table. "This is Kip, This is Bruce," etcetera, until they got to the last person, "and this is Amy Gallagher." They got the response they were looking for -- my jaw dropped. Amy had long black hair, tan skin, and a beard and moustache. Turns out one of the guys, Robert, had created a second user under the name Amy Gallagher, just to see if he could get away with it. Well, he did. Some people claimed they knew or at least suspected, but I'm not so sure. Robert was like that. Well, Amy stuck around for a bit after that, but not much longer.

Mind you, this was back in the day before three out of four teenage girls were overweight fifty-year-old men. It was an honest experiment with, perhaps, a bit of prank-ness, but certainly no malice or ill intentions. It does, however, point out that physical attributes are not necessarily related to personality. It also shows that the images we build in our mind of people, based on their stated opinions, preferences, and other writing are not always accurate, even when there is no deception involved. Judge your books by their contents, not their covers.

Related Links Bay Area Bloggers Met at KRON Studios douglas.nerad The Salvation Army National Headquarters

[ Posted: 12:00 | home | print ]

That's funny. I knew what you looked like of course - you have one photo on the Journal that I could find and I'm not that different in person I don't think. Appearances mean nothing - at least not the appearance of others. I have a tendency to agonize about my own. i tried your email again - still nonfunctioning somehow.

Posted by ann adams

Far too funny!

You knew one of the pioneers of online decption! I'm so glad there are true stories like this out there... It proves I've been right to always shun online flirtations of any sort unless I've met the person first. Hmmm... Maybe that's too much information. I'll stop now. :)

Posted by douglas nerad

Oh, I don't know, I've known a couple of women that I met online that turned out to be great catches. (Alas, not for me.) Amy Gallagher, however, wasn't one of them. 8^)

Posted by Uncle Roger

There aren't too many photos of me out there; I tend to avoid cameras (at least the business end) instinctively.

Posted by Uncle Roger