Dinner vs. Instant Message :: Personal Narrative Writing

Dinner vs. Instant Message I can remember sitting at my boyfriend's house, while he took part in Teen Chat , an online chatroom that he had recently become addicted to . He's being awful quiet and I am getting annoyed at the chronic pounding at the keyboard and the spontaneous giggles coming from him that pop out of nowhere. Here I am watching some dumb movie on HBO with his cat "Whiskey" coughing louder and louder until I finally get his attention. "Hey babe, you wanna type?" Did I want to type? No, I didn't want to type! You promised me Chilis! We were supposed to go out! "I guess,"I said. Anything to get some attention here. I wandered over to the damn machine to see what his fuss was about. Ok, I admit it, I was amazed that he could be a part of ten conversations at one time. There were about fifteen people in the chat room, talking about everything from sports to some stuff that I would like to think of myself too much of a lady to mention. "This is dumb, you WOULD want to be a part of this!" I said totally aggarvated that he could be subject to some of the things they were talking about. "Babe, WE'RE talking about baseball!" I guess he was right and I noticed that about five people acted as if they knew him before he even entered the chat room. I asked him how he knew these select few. "This is Ryan," he would say, "He is taking some of the same classes as me at CFCC, this girl's name is Jessica, she's from Tennessee, she just IM's me to talk sometimes." Wow. Friends online? Now this was starting to intrigue me. I mean how many of my friends could I communicate with? No phone bills or waiting three or four days to receive outdated letters. Now the meeting new people thing seemed a bit ridiculous, though he would beg to differ. But, whether I cared for it or not, there was a whole community online and he's meeting more people as I sit beside him holding Whiskey in my PJ's, watching the walls in his empty living room. He had always tried to get me to type on this thing and say hello. Finally, the next time, I did. "Say something," he would tell me. I wasn't surprised or disappointed to see that my simple "hello" was completely ignored.