Of Mice and Gwen

I found this quote while Googling for where I had a told a story involving my youngest son.

You say, tell you facts and feelings. Well, facts first, they’re easier. Clem’s A.A. Battery is quartered in a girls’ school, from which he writes superbly funny letters. The girls are absent, of course, but their school-stories are there, and he is finding these a fascinating study. His favourite chapter-heading, so far, is “Monica Turns Out a Decent Sort”; but at present he is absorbed in a last-war one about a games mistress who was a spy in disguise and used to write code messages on tennis-balls and throw them into the North Sea. He says he can hardly wait to get to the end. He is also making a collection of graffiti, which are all quite touchingly mild. Things like “Gwenny T. is a Big Pig” and “Molly B. is a Brat.” There is a very dignified one, which simply says: “I think Gwenny T. is the most hateful person I have ever met.” And another, arranged like an equation: “Violet W.+ Gwenny T. = Lovey-dovey. Ha! ha!” Clem says he was so relieved to find that somebody liked poor Gwenny T. after all.

It’s an excerpt from Mrs Miniver, a short story by Jan Struther.  Partly it was amusing to see my name and initial.  Partly it made me think about how my name has gone through phases.  Unlike Mary, Linda and the like, Gwen is a name that comes and goes, popularity wise.  When I was a child it was very uncommon.  It meant I seldom could find cute little personalized items with my name and I remember not liking that.  So when I named my children, I gave them more common names.

It’s kind of funny that I am starting to be known everywhere as Gwenny, as well.  I hated being called Gwenny by everyone but my grandfather.  Through my teens and into my 20s and 30s, if someone called me Gwenny I would frown and say, “It’s just Gwen.”  Even my sorority sisters, who I gave a lot of freedom in how they treated me, were not allowed to call me Gwenny. It’s a cute, I think, story about how I journeyed to a place where I know only allow it but work hard to keep the first page of returns for Gwenny on Google.

Back in 1992 I was introduced to the Internet.  I started seeing a guy who was active on BBSs and he helped me get the Commodore 64, which I had gotten in trade for an extra week of visitation with the youngest but that is another story, hooked up to several local BBSs.  Let me digress for a moment to explain what a BBS is and how it works, since older folks were likely not connected at the time and younger folks will never have heard of them.

A BBS, or Bulletin Board System^wiki, was a private computer running software that let other people log into it via a modem and play games and participate in forums, called echos.   You could also get mail via “echo”.  It was called “echo” because your message was bounced from BBS to BBS, keeping the cost down for local sysops.  Periodically a sysop who ran a “hub” would dial out long distance and bounce all the accumulated messages to another “hub” which would not only distribute it locally but bounce it further.

It was simple, elegant and mostly free.  You could send a message to someone in Australia or the UK or anywhere Fidonet went and within a few hours they would receive it.  There was one small drawback.  Mail would be distributed to anyone with your username.  And there was no way to ensure you were the only user with your username.  I had originally chosen the name “Poohbear” since that was what I had been called for years by sibs and others.  It was cute and girlie, *I* thought.  And so I proceeded to make friends and converse with them.  One of the echoes I got involved in was Merry Meat, an adult erotic/flirt echo.  I quickly attracted a following and received a dozen or more private messages a day from admirers. (I am an accomplished flirt and have a wicked wit, if I do say so myself.)

Then one day I received a message from another Poohbear.  At 6 foot plus male bouncer in an Industrial bar in the midwest.  He asked, nicely, if I would mind changing my username because he was getting my mail and he was . . . well, he would prefer NOT to get those messages, thank you.  Even if he had not had the name first, I would have complied.  But that left me with having to come up with a new name.  My sysop, a woman running a BBS called The Domestic Engineer, came to my rescue.  “Why not be Gwenny the Pooh,” she suggested.  I was charmed by the name!  Yes, it meant I would be called Gwenny but . .well, it was so darned cute.

Thus was born Gwenny the Pooh.  Many were the adventures of Ms GTPooh over the next few years . .adventures that included having her breasts deified by atheists and having a dolt try to “warlock” her from the Usenet group alt.pagan.  Over the years Gwenny the Pooh became unwieldy and I shortened it to Gwenny when available or gtpooh when someone had gotten Gwenny first.

It’s hard to believe that this all started just a bit over 15 years ago.  When I think about the changes that have come about since then . .when I think about all the wonderful people I know from all over the world because of the power of social networks and forums, I am grateful to all the geek boys who work so diligently to improve the process and bring us every closer.

That’s my story.  I’m sticking to it.

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