"Good Bye"

No, not my blog - I've finally said my goodbye, in a stilted, robot-like male voice, to AOL after nearly 10 years. I have no regrets, I've been meaning to cancel my account for a long time and just kept putting it off, making sure I had changed my email address with absolutely everyone. I've got a free Yahoo! account now and am perfectly happy with it, except for when some numbnut friend of mine sends me a gigantic MIME file internet joke (that I can't even read because I have a Mac) and it fills up my allotted MB, like an elephant in my little virtual apartment.

The customer service people at AOL, it's their job to convince you to stay when you call (yes, you have to call, you can't simply click a "cancel" button) to tell them you've had enough of them and their creepy "AO" logo, reminiscent of the spooky pyramid-topping eye on the back of a dollar bill. So poor Jason at AOL, it was his job to ask me why I was quitting after 9 years and 8 months of "You've Got Mail". I could have gone on about the spam, the cost, the speed or lack thereof, but I simply told him I didn't need it anymore. When I first encountered the Internet in 1994, I needed a little help interfacing, and AOL was a nice friendly ride to the great electronic void, like carpooling with your next-door neighbor. (I also used the short-lived eWorld for a while. Anyone remember eWorld? ...anyone?) I no longer need the help.

The funniest part of the farewell phonecall with Jason was that I was required to give the answer to my secret question in order to prove it was really my account I was closing. Nine years and 8 months ago, setting up my AOL account and my secret question, I apparently had quite a sense of humor, or perhaps had a few too many cheap beers in me. My secret question was "How fresh are you?" and the answer, which I had typed in as a younger, sillier me and never expected to be saying over the phone, to Jason or anyone else, is, of course, "Like having fresh panties every day." (Which was, once upon a time, the advertising catch phrase for Stayfree or Carefree or some other feminine product. Really.) I'm glad Jason got a good laugh over it, since he wasn't able to get his commission for keeping me on as an AOL member.