Meeting a Bucharest modem

It would appear that as of late the young and not-so-young inhabitants of our once beautiful city are more and more “into” the Internet. All the other great things modern technology has to offer, including cellular phones, the one certain way to affirm your position as a modern, wealthy Romanian, are welcome as well. We will talk about the Internet though. Say you wanted a bit of adventure but you fear that your sebaceous apparatus is way too shifted towards acne. Well, not to worry – you can choose a safe, guaranteed way to get you through the night, I mean nightmare.

Every man and woman should know that Friday nights are for fun and not for work. How can one be expected to go out when he hasn’t got a car or money… or a date? If you have a computer you can. In a certain way. You can get out of your mind. Yes, it is true. Computers have proven that you don’t need to be a yoga master to perform extracorporeal activity. You can pretend. Make believe is just as good as the real thing if you don’t worry about getting blind. It’s open to all. Young, old, black, white, rich and poor. A computer is no longer the privilege of the rich. Not even in Romania.

Every parent makes a point of honour out of buying a computer for his five-year-old. Children should not be denied access to true culture. Books are for the stupid. Let the kids learn the new ways. Let’s give them what we could only dream of in our time. We were poor when we were kids but our offspring will have the best of everything. What will they do with it? They will play games for six months or until the parents firmly state that “If you don’t do better in school I’ll take that damn machine back!” How can they improve fast? – “Gee, dad, have you heard about Internet? They say it’s the best way to find out stuff. I could even talk to real French people – my French grades would skyrocket!”

Well, how can we put ourselves between our children and their well-being? We then go find out where we could buy this “Internet thing” and set our kid up. He shows us how things work, we get to see great educational stuff. The real contact happens at night though, when dad is safely snoring. The kid learned in school about the “unbelievable stuff chicks do on the Net.” You can see where I’m going. Then father learns at work about the “unbelievable stuff chicks do on the Net” and that night he bumps into his red-eyed son desperately hitting ALT – F4. Luckily he haven’t found out yet that this particular command closes the current window – fast. He sends the kid to bed, worrying “en passant” that he may be studying too hard, and gets down to business. After a couple of “Wow’s” he starts worrying that the kids may find out the Internet can be used for evil.

But by the time he begins considering pulling the plug, he is too engrossed to care. He simply moves the computer to the study where there’s a key lock that can be used at night. During the first months, adults learn about chat. If children free, they start “dating.” Gone are the lonely nights. They find out about cyber-sex and try it. Something’s missing. Now if they could only add image to the words… but wait. They can surf some xxx pages AND chat at the same time. That’s better.

The “chat people” actually have communities and they meet Sundays in parks, have good times and drink beer. You can keep it one to one. You can meet a beautiful, long-legged-red-headed, willing and able, and when you go out to meet her (or him) in person you find out he or she used to work as a test subject for a bankrupt chemical company and that the third eye is the least of the problems. It’s like a lottery. You win some, you lose some. You mostly lose. The Internet is a good thing but with great opportunities come great responsibilities. Use your powers for good.