October 9, 2001

Addiction Smiction
By Helen Bruce

I "logged on" to AOL for the first time in April of 1995. It was a brand-new experience for me, having completely missed the bulletin board chat era.

Along with Instant Messages and email, I quickly stumbled across AOL's shareware section. "Wow", I thought. "Free software? Very cool! Let the downloading begin!"

Now bear in mind that this was during the days of the "5 Free Hours for 30 days" trial disk....and each additional hour was $2.99. I had a 2,400 baud modem...and rapidly decided to upgrade to a 4,800. A week later, I had to have a "blazing" 9,600 baud modem. Of course, each upgrade cost me $50. But I was still on "free" time, what the heck?! For some unknown reason, I thought I had 30 days before they AOL would start billing me...all free time of course. I soon discovered I had erred in my thinking.

I loved fonts...and downloaded every one of them I could find. I then discovered graphics. I must have downloaded thousands of them, because I rapidly maxed out my "huge" 20 megabyte hard drive. "You've got to put these things on floppy disks", my computer guru told me. "Oh", I responded. "Silly me!" I bought boxes of floppies and "double-spaced" them. Remember double-spacing?

Then I found programs that would do everything you could imagine...and they were free! (Well, sort of.) There were programs to help the kids with their homework. There were programs that would provide me with recipes to feed my family. Programs to help me lose weight. Programs for this and for that....and I downloaded every program I could find that interested me. I soon ran out of disks and had to go buy more. Did it ever once occur to me that programs get updated from time to time? Well, no, that never occurred to me. I hadn't been around computers all that long, and Windows 3.1 had been 3.1 for as long as I could remember!

Four short weeks later, since I didn't have a credit card and had set AOL up on the "checking" plan, AOL took its payment from my checking account. Imagine how I dreaded going to my husband and telling him that WE had a little financing problem, since my AOL bill was $399!! Needless to say, there was a little spat at our house that night, and for a few nights following that.

That was the beginning of my Internet addiction. Eight years later, I'm still here!

Helen Bruce
Owner - Lone Star Site Design