Goodbye Childhood

Another day, another step in the transition to adulthood. Today, I deleted my hotmail account.

On the surface not a big deal--I haven't really used that account since before college. It was replaced by my college email and then by my gmail account. But the hotmail account was a tie to my past. First created in Indonesia, using my JIS ID number, it gave me a tie to an important part of my life. It is sad, in a way, the way the email became a dumping ground for spam emails and newsletters I wanted to sign up for for one free giveaway--a free song download or something along those lines. And now that it is gone completely, something I feel I had to do to stop the spread of some perceived virus, does that mean my past is gone? No, it doesn't, it means only that I am not the person who created the email account. The boy who sat at a computer in Jakarta is not gone, but merely a part of the developing man who has had many experiences since then, and will continue to have experiences for hopefully many years to come.

The account was deleted because, when I checked it today, which I do periodically because my grandparents for some reason still send emails to that account even though I have told them countless times not to send things to it, that I have a new email, that I don't check it frequently...when I checked it today, I found an email to myself and a number of rejected senders emails. I didn't remember sending anything to myself, but not ruling it out because sometimes hotmail works faster than gmail on slow computers here, I opened the email. The only thing inside was a link. Guessing it might be a virus (and never knowing whether just opening the email activates the virus or clicking on the link) I quickly close and delete the email and then assuming that the virus did the typical virus thing and emailed itself to everyone in my contact list, prepared an email to everyone I could think of. Fortunately, I feel like this won't be a major issue, as many people no longer use or check the emails they did 10 years ago. But some emails are still on the books, and to those people I sent warning letters.

And then I decided it was best, in case this should happen again somehow, that I should delete my account. Actually, before I had completely committed to that plan of action, I deleted all of my contacts. It was amusing and a bit sad to see how few people from the contact list I still kept in touch with. Besides my family, who I do still talk to of course, there were people from Boy Scouts, from Indonesia, from high school. What happened to those people I wonder. Where are they now? What are they doing and are they happy? What would they think of me being here in Azerbaijan as a Peace Corps volunteer? Would they even remember me? I don't really remember all of them. Some were one-time emails, for a school project, or for camping trip preparation. Some were friends, some of them very good friends, people I thought I would stay in contact with for the rest of my life. And in all but a few exceptions, I’ve lost track of them. By the time we found each other again on Facebook, as I have with some people, it was mostly too late for a real friendship to be rekindled. I am happy with my life, with the friends I have, and do not believe I would change the course of my life, but I cannot help but wonder how my life would have been altered if I were still in contact with master_monkey or jclark01. Wherever they are, whoever they are, I hope they remember me as fondly as I remember them, and hope they too are becoming the adults they want to be, the adults that seemed so far off when we knew each other.