It was, say, the
summer of 2003 when I got wind of a little thing called Blogger. Billed as a
free, simple platform for publishing anything and everything, it almost seemed
too good to be true. My fingers started twitching. It would be my own little
slice of the interwebs. There were even “blog rings” that would let me follow
the few other people writing about similar topics. So without even a second
thought, I signed up, hit send and just like that I was a “blogger.”
But I should
probably back up for a moment.
At the risk of
revealing that I’m an old guy, I am proud to note that I was an early refugee
from the static tyranny of yellow legal pads and ballpoint pens the moment I
got my hands on WordStar. It was the early 80s and it was magical. It was on a
machine that displayed whatever you typed on
a screen. You could go back and fix
mistakes. No more clickity-clack of steel keys, no more smell of 3in1 oil,
no more inked ribbons that reliably went dry each and every time you had a
final paper due. With a computer I was a WiteOut-stained-wretch no more.
And it’s been an
electronic free-for-all ever since: papers for school, letters to editors,
opinion pieces for any paper that would have me and bits of ephemera for myself.
Bits of ephemera that were, parenthetically speaking, really little more than
poor imitations of S. J. Perelman. (The real irony is, of course, that it’s a
stylistic thing that I can’t seem to avoid. Just consider this piece as a whole.
Although there is eventually a point, it’s all discursive prose that noodles
here and there and is chockablock with so many extra words that I can hear my
copy of Strunk and White weeping softly. And see? I’m doing it right now.)
Anyway, mention of
discursive prose brings us back to the summer of 2003 and Blogger. Until then I
had been sending off pieces about this Local Issue and that Personal Observation
to our local Gannett rag, the Journal News. (Pieces I sent on paper, in stamped envelopes via the fine folks at the USPS. I know, right?! )
The Gannett editor at the time seemed happy enough to publish much of what I sent,
but now I had the ability to focus and publish my own column of sorts; and so
Dad’s On The Couch was born.
Dad’s On the Couch? Yeah, I was younger, my
kids were wee and I realized that this was the perfect outlet for sharing my
experiences as a dad who was home raising his kids…
Anyway, tomorrow in Part
Two, I connect virtually with some other dads via Web Rings and I discover that
there was an official name for me: I was a Stay at Home Dad, with capitals.
.
