In the early '90s, after graduating from high school, I took a road trip to Pennsylvania for Pennsic (SCA - medieval recreation). The person that I camped next to was a couple years older than me and awesome, she gave me tons of info on things that I was curious about within the SCA, and when we parted, gave me her email address.

"What's that?!" I asked.

I was heading off to an engineering school, so she assured me that it would all make sense when I got to college (lol - can you imagine? "Just take this random text string, keep it safe for the next few months, and when you get to college... find THE EMAIL! You'll know what to do!")

Obviously, it did quickly become obvious and I mastered email, as well as newsgroups and the internet. OMG... before Amazon, Google, Paypal, or Netflix. Crazy to think about that now.

Does anyone else remember newsgroups (i.e. usenet)? The original forums!!!