Generational Pioneer
1995 was a big year in the Jalette household, and not just because Jordan returned to basketball, or the Unabomber was in the news, or because famed longball hitter the Dalai Lama proclaimed 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyimi as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama (source: Wikipedia).
No, 1995 was big time because it was the year that the parents caved, went down to Sears, and came back with the Packard Bell Windows 95 edition PC. With a modem.
And I think that you can all bask in the reflective glow of the 256 color monitor with me, since you all got into this new world at roughly the same time.
As a generation, we experienced a myriad of "firsts" at this time.
Your first chatroom shit-talking contest. Your first AIM block. Your first survey email. Your first photoshopped .jpg of Cindy Crawford's head on a naked girl's body.
And your second, and your third.
And all of that is well and good, but not as important as the other first.
Your first email address. Here's what I'm getting at. Think about the time, if you can bring yourself back to that era. Think about how old you were, what kind of adolescent bullshit you were mired in, and what kind of awkwardness resided in your bones. As a generation, we were the first to live in the awkward phase at exactly the same time as we were pioneering out into the information superhighway. And we picked some fucked up names to do it with. We were just old enough to get on the computer without adult intervention, and just 8th grade enough to be someone mired in the midst of struggling to create identity and come to terms with who we were vs. who we wanted to be. In other words, we were completely fucking retarded.
When I was in 8th grade, a sudden social consciousness emerged in all of the kids who played youth basketball. And this consciousness told them one thing - Jerry has some sharp fucking elbows. And he's a clumsy one. Stay away. So among the 18 different nicknames that I had then, depending on the week and my current lack of motor aptitutude, I started getting several based on being gangly and razor 'bowed.
Which leads to the Praying Mantis.
As popularize by Notorious BIG and the Wu-Tang Clan (who couldn't be more credible at this time) the Praying Mantis stuck. Now if this was my email, it would still be fucking ridiculous. But I took it to the next level.
Since some people equated the Mantis with the Grasshopper, this became an often-enough used variation. So I ran with it, and my email would be Grasshopper. But, the 8th-9th grade me wasn't quite satisfied. How did this name directly establish that I liked sports? My hideous teeshirt and ballcap collection did not nearly cover this base. Nor did my playing of sports. And my baseball/basketball/football card collection was piddling when compared to Dennis Ballou's.
So I needed my email to contain that link. And since I wore 32 that year (only to NEVER wear it again), I was Grasshopper32.
But that was not nearly hood enough. Sure, I was from 99% caucasion Burrillville, RI. Sure my name is Gerard. Of course I was reading John Grisham and Michael Crichton, and wanted to be Zack Morris. But not everyone would know that I was down with all of this hood shit by my email. SO I TOOK OUT THE "ER" AND SPICED IT UP, DAWG.
GRASSHOPPA32 like bass in your face.
As I became more mature (read: Not less of a douchebag, but conscious enough to realize that I shouldn't publicize it so readily), I began to use this email exclusively for junk. Store signups, member lists, social networking junk mail repository, fantasy sports, etc. became the to-do list for Grasshoppa. Which is all well and good.
Until I go to use my coupons at Borders, where I am one day certain that my quirky pseudo-intelllectual pop-culture elitist reading interest will be noticed by some hipster female with plastic rimmed glasses and she will unleash her repressed sexual prowess (which she only knows about through reading, because she will be a virgin) upon me immediately after I order my mochachinno (what a fun yet sophisticated drink). Until I fuck it up because I have to tell the register jockey that Yes, indeed I am on your email list. Look it up. I am THE Grasshopper32. But like, spelled with an A at the end instead of an ER.
Because I am hood.
And I know that many of you are, too.