Inert Ramblings

I used to hang out quite a bit with the freaks from the Nashua, NH BBS scene back in the day. Yes, the BBS scene. 2400 bps (that’s 2.4 Kbps as opposed to today’s 56 Kbps for you new school kiddies) modems screaming along connecting to one line standalone Waffle, Renegade, Telegard and Wildcat systems running off of 386 and, quite rarely, 486 machines. If you were lucky, the system you connected to had well over a hundred megabytes of hard drive space that you could use to trade hefty 300 KB and 400 KB warez files!

Now, the particular breed of person who is attracted to the BBS scene is an unconventional one. Long nights staring at CGA and VGA displays typing away in extended ANSI on completely random forums filled with mind-numbing dribble. Occasionally, real information is traded and textfiles are traded for warez or MIDIs. But mindless dribble is usually the norm.

The reason mindless dribble is the norm is probably because most BBSers I hung out with were complete social outcasts who hung out at Denny’s until 4:00 AM every morning, occasionally stayed awake during school hours and spent the rest of their afternoons calling BBS after BBS utilizing their limited quota of connection time per board. Messages are posted, dribble is exchanged and, for the lucky ones, 256 color animated porn .GIFs are downloaded!

It was with this group that I found solace because, quite frankly, I was not the weirdest within the group. I could hang out, act normal, and there was always someone weirder. One one particular morning, I officially found one of the strangest of the bunch.

Eleven years ago, snow was falling. Roads were covered. My Volkswagen Rabbit Diesel chugged along undaunted. Then, across the radio, snowday announcements were made…which was quite inconvenient since I was already on my way to school. Go figure.

So turned North and drove through the back roads of Nashua through Amherst and then, since I was already halfway there, kept driving on to Mont Vernon. For, in Mount Vernon, at the top of a rather small mountain, was the home of a girl. This girl lived in a house where parents were nowhere to be found and, at any given moment, many stoned BBSers were hanging out. It was this morning that I decided that the best place to hang out would be among these freaks.

In the corner, an incredible smell emanated. At the center of this smell was a plate. Sitting on this plate was a piece of moldy cheese. Attached to this cheese was a string. At the end of this string was one of the sober BBSers pulling on it. Every time the cheese pulsated, he said “queso por queso”.

Staring at the talking cheese was one of the guys who was the most stoned of the bunch. The cheese talked. The stoner stared. The plate pulsated. The cheese talked. “Queso por queso”. The stoner giggled. I chuckled at the stoner. The morning, in my eyes, turned out to be a plus.

Around noon, I drove home. My morning was complete, and it was time to, well, go log on and make fun of the person I had just watched on the BBS that he, himself, ran.