Something I still feel guilty about almost 35-40 years later..
Posted by
Jovian (aka Jovian)
Sep 15 '23, 12:46
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Back in the day, long before the internet was born. There were things called BBS’s. You would use a dial modem (my 1200 baud modem to be specific) to call direct into these BBS’s which were hosted on someone’s personal computer (so when I was around 14 years old).. You would and could find all types of information on these. Legal and illegal. It was like the wild west of the internet before the internet, if that makes sense.
Instructions on how to make homemade acid, napalm, how liquid draino and comet crystals are combustible when exposed to gasoline, Long distance calling card #s, all types of crazy stuff. However there were also old school text games and message boards and stuff like that.
I used the illegal calling card #s located on these to make toll free calls to these random BBS’s that were all over the country. Chicago, LA, St Louis, etc. So I never paid a penny on my 'teen phone line'.
One time on a message board of particular BBS, a gentleman from England messaged me and asked if I was willing to tape the American version of Doctor Who for him. As it was not available back there. That he would send me new VHS tapes to me. I would record them and I would mail them back to him in England.
Now I that even I think about that, its crazy that I gave a complete stranger who literally could have been from my anywhere, my home address. But again I was like 14.
But sure enough the guy was on the level and less than a month later I received a package of a dozen brand new VHS tapes straight from the UK.
My guilt resides in the fact that I did not do as I promised. Never recorded one episode for him and kept the VHS tapes (which back then for 14 year old, where not cheap). I never followed up and I never dialed back into the specific BBS again.
I still feel bad about this!!
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