He came in with two large boxes and one thin box. Then he assembled a desk. Carefully, he laid a gray box slowly on top of the desk. He pulled out a flat plastic rectangle with thousands of little square cupcakes organized in neat rows. I was awestruck.

Hours later, I was online. The three letters, which many years later would cause never-ending snickering and jokin, had intrigued me. Yes, that's right. A-O-L. I headed into chatrooms with my father's screenname - paulng - because people at that time weren't creative. And so I was the mere eleven-year-old suddenly addicted to chat rooms.