The message board incident.

Since several people have wanted to hear the breakdown story, I feel obligated to share. I can't promise that it won't offend anyone or that I've grown up much more since it all happened. I own my 12 year old self.

Back, oh, 10 years ago, I was a regular poster on the AOL welfare debate board. Yeah, yeah, I was on the hard-ass side and sometime I really ought to blog about my feelings on all this, but I hate pissing off people I like so I hesitate...at least until they like me so much they can get over it. *grins* Anyway, back to the story. Things would get very heated and ugly, so TOS violations were rampant and many (not me, amazingly) were down to the wire and in danger of losing their AOL accounts. Then we found heaven in the form of ACLU message boards. No TOS to worry about, no adults being babysat, we could make our own board...it was lovely. We picked our snarky selves up and headed over there to have at it. There's the background.

One poster was a young woman, early 20's, from a very wealthy family and she could positively feel the sun rising and sitting in her every day, she thought she was so special. Add to that, she was married to a man who worked for AOL and, for some weird reason, she thought that gave her power over the rest of us. Now, she and I not only took the same side in the grand debate, but we shared a name. Neither served to endear her to me and, in fact, I detested her. Whatever someone else had, she had better. If someone was sick, she was dying. No kid was as cute or smart as hers. Her family wasn't only wealthy, they were wealthy *and powerful complete with constant reminders of how we just don't know how much power they have if we happened to piss her off. This was generally followed by how her husband works for AOL and has access to all of our information (back then, remember, AOL was what pretty much everyone used, including me). This all only served to make me want to annoy her more...so, I would. I loved "altering", making up another name and posting to get people riled - boy, I really ought to state here I'm not P, Andi or anyone else but me, I swear!- and one day Little Miss Sunshine announced she and her husband were trying to have another baby. Every other thing she said, from then on, pertained to this goal and how, basically, they were trying harder than anyone else ever did. Yeah. A month passed and she was genuinely shocked and mad she wasn't pregnant. One more month passed...same thing and boy, was she ever foul. Most everyone found it amusing that, for once, she couldn't just have a Veruca Salt moment and get what she wanted. She, on the other hand, was all tizzied up mad over everything. Never one to let a good opportunity go to waste, I decided to "alter"...as her ovum. Every time she'd get nasty, I'd just post something along these lines, using the name "EggNinny":

Mama? Please don't get mad. When you get mad your tubes scrunch up and it hurts and I can't come down!

It would take 3 or 4 of these posts, all escalating into something more and more ridiculous, all from her eggs begging her to please not do this, please act nice, and she would flounce off letting us all know her husband would be finding out who was doing this and the person would pay for it. After a few days of my little game going on, she just beyond nasty one night and so, naturally, her eggs had to let their feelings be known.

MAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAA??? Please, stop, nooooooo....nooooooo.....can't breathe.....maaa........

She lost it. I mean, she went off the deep end and was posting how she was going to kill whoever was doing this in the midst of a whole lot of incoherency. I? Was highly amused, which probably wasn't nice of me but sheeeesh, it was funny and I was a stranger on a message board, for the love of God. She never came back and I found out later from a real life acquaintance of hers that the following day she was admitted for psychiatric treatment. I have to believe I played a part in that and I probably ought to feel bad but, even now, I just can't muster much guilt up and still giggle a little over it all.

If there is a Hell, I'm going, aren't I?