Happy 3-11 Day everyone!
For me, 3/11 day is not just a marathon concert that happens every even-numbered year, but it also calls back a time 20 years ago on 3-11-1996, when I met a kindred soul, Chris Mueller while calling one of those telephone chat line ads off the Dallas Observer magazine. This was the era before smart phones social media, instant messaging and internet chatrooms.
Inside the phone chat line, your profile was a recorded audio greeting. Mine was a 15 second clip of Urge Overkill’s “Girl you’ll be a woman soon” from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I did this to weed out the sleazy guys searching fot hook ups. I was just looking for enlightened minds to talk to. Plus I was only 17, a minor, and not interested in being jail bait. There weren’t many outlets for meeting people when you were stuck at home on Spring Break, so the chat line was like the pre-cursor social networking. (It’s not that I didn’t have friends, its just that most were gone or busy doing their own things, I swear!)
My audio greeting did attract one kindred spirit, and that was Chris. He was 23 years old and a psych major at UT Dallas. What got me was how he enunciated his words perfectly – like a professor – and even pronounced the “l” in the word “talk.” He recognized the song and even mentioned how it was an original Neil Diamond tune.
Of course I didn’t know later on in life I would become a deejay, a writer, and a broadcast video producer, but our conversation about music caused us to exchange numbers, and that entire spring break, and even the rest of that year, Chris and I had a ‘Meeting of the Minds.’ Our conversations were witty, ironic, anecdotal and high brow intellectual. Mostly our talks centered around 80’s new wave and 90’s Alternative Rock, especially from our beloved alternative radio station 94.5 THE EDGE.
We discussed U2, the Sundays, Lemonheads, Blind Melon, Rhett Miller and the Old 97's, new musical finds we would discover at Borders Bookstore, or Bill's Records and Tapes, independent films like "Bottlerocket" and 'black comedies' like "Young Poisoner's Handbook" and "Dont be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice" and other topics that would keep us up till past midnight. We would leave ‘ironic’ messages for each other on answering machines, and both get scolded by parents and families that were tired of the phone line getting tied up.
Our circle expanded as we met other people from the chatline and they sort of became a ‘social network.’ Back before ‘catfishing’ was even invented, Chris and I tried to do the ‘opposite’ of meeting face to face.
We would agree to be in the same ‘space’ at the same ‘time’ but never meet. We did not even describe to each other how we looked. The only evidence would be through a gift or package exchange that one would leave for the other. Our packages mostly consisted of ‘date-tapes’ (pre-MP3 ,where you would record a playlist of favorite songs on a cassette tape for your friend or significant other) however we called ours ‘Infliction Tapes’ – as we would try to inflict our musical tastes on one another.
There were times when our non-meetings would be unsuccessful because by accident we would end up meeting. Like when Chris came to my workplace at Braum’s Ice Cream Store on Plano Rd and Forest Lane. He would be dropping of a package at a certain time, in which I would already be off of work and out of the store. However, my boss had asked me to stay, and I was still behind the counter when I spotted a bearded young man holding a package coming through the door. So quickly I hid behind the milk shake machine and had my friend Kimmie intercept him while I spied on their exchange.
Or another time, when I went to pick up his package at UT Dallas, (it was a scavenger hunt that led from his professor’s office and into his Buick 88 in the parking lot) that my friend Connie and I were confronted by what we thought was Campus Police but turned out to two guys who wanted to have a lengthy discussion with us. The conversation lasted two hours to the point that Chris found us having a forum around his car.
As Spring Break melted into Summer, we called this heady time period of Kindred Connection 'Bryan Adams' Summer of 69' inversed (ie: 96 being the inverse)
Funny how in spite of our efforts to “Not Meet” Chris and I ended up at the same school, Richland College, after I graduated from North Garland High School. And after I moved to San Antonio, Chris ended up working at my old high school as a tutor and even met some of my old classmates.
But it was through those exchanges that I was turned on to a folk singing duo called the Indigo Girls. In fact, it was their soulful, insightful lyrics and their wonderful 12-string guitars that comforted me during times of heartbreak and made me appreciate the beauty of nature and love.
By then – Y2K hit and he and I lived in other cities. I even went farther and moved to Hawaii then back to Texas again. We each went our separate ways, doing our own projects, starting our own families and glimpsing each other’s happenings on Facebook.
But today, 20 years later, on March 11, 2016 – I look back and realize that Spring of 1996, on March 11, and recall just how much fun that time was for me. Who knew being stuck at home, and a chance encounter on the party line, would open up another world for me? Meeting other minds, particularly that of Chris Mueller, whose conversation on music and “infliction tapes” led to my being a deejay for San Antonio College 90.1 FM , which later paved the way to my current projects in the broadcast media and video production field. So on this 3-11 day, I raise a toast of Pepsi Clear and Coke II, to my friend Chris Mueller, the Dallas Observer, those telephone chat lines of olden days, and the Indigo Girls.
For me, 3/11 day is not just a marathon concert that happens every even-numbered year, but it also calls back a time 20 years ago on 3-11-1996, when I met a kindred soul, Chris Mueller while calling one of those telephone chat line ads off the Dallas Observer magazine. This was the era before smart phones social media, instant messaging and internet chatrooms.
Inside the phone chat line, your profile was a recorded audio greeting. Mine was a 15 second clip of Urge Overkill’s “Girl you’ll be a woman soon” from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I did this to weed out the sleazy guys searching fot hook ups. I was just looking for enlightened minds to talk to. Plus I was only 17, a minor, and not interested in being jail bait. There weren’t many outlets for meeting people when you were stuck at home on Spring Break, so the chat line was like the pre-cursor social networking. (It’s not that I didn’t have friends, its just that most were gone or busy doing their own things, I swear!)
My audio greeting did attract one kindred spirit, and that was Chris. He was 23 years old and a psych major at UT Dallas. What got me was how he enunciated his words perfectly – like a professor – and even pronounced the “l” in the word “talk.” He recognized the song and even mentioned how it was an original Neil Diamond tune.
Of course I didn’t know later on in life I would become a deejay, a writer, and a broadcast video producer, but our conversation about music caused us to exchange numbers, and that entire spring break, and even the rest of that year, Chris and I had a ‘Meeting of the Minds.’ Our conversations were witty, ironic, anecdotal and high brow intellectual. Mostly our talks centered around 80’s new wave and 90’s Alternative Rock, especially from our beloved alternative radio station 94.5 THE EDGE.
We discussed U2, the Sundays, Lemonheads, Blind Melon, Rhett Miller and the Old 97's, new musical finds we would discover at Borders Bookstore, or Bill's Records and Tapes, independent films like "Bottlerocket" and 'black comedies' like "Young Poisoner's Handbook" and "Dont be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice" and other topics that would keep us up till past midnight. We would leave ‘ironic’ messages for each other on answering machines, and both get scolded by parents and families that were tired of the phone line getting tied up.
Our circle expanded as we met other people from the chatline and they sort of became a ‘social network.’ Back before ‘catfishing’ was even invented, Chris and I tried to do the ‘opposite’ of meeting face to face.
We would agree to be in the same ‘space’ at the same ‘time’ but never meet. We did not even describe to each other how we looked. The only evidence would be through a gift or package exchange that one would leave for the other. Our packages mostly consisted of ‘date-tapes’ (pre-MP3 ,where you would record a playlist of favorite songs on a cassette tape for your friend or significant other) however we called ours ‘Infliction Tapes’ – as we would try to inflict our musical tastes on one another.
There were times when our non-meetings would be unsuccessful because by accident we would end up meeting. Like when Chris came to my workplace at Braum’s Ice Cream Store on Plano Rd and Forest Lane. He would be dropping of a package at a certain time, in which I would already be off of work and out of the store. However, my boss had asked me to stay, and I was still behind the counter when I spotted a bearded young man holding a package coming through the door. So quickly I hid behind the milk shake machine and had my friend Kimmie intercept him while I spied on their exchange.
Or another time, when I went to pick up his package at UT Dallas, (it was a scavenger hunt that led from his professor’s office and into his Buick 88 in the parking lot) that my friend Connie and I were confronted by what we thought was Campus Police but turned out to two guys who wanted to have a lengthy discussion with us. The conversation lasted two hours to the point that Chris found us having a forum around his car.
As Spring Break melted into Summer, we called this heady time period of Kindred Connection 'Bryan Adams' Summer of 69' inversed (ie: 96 being the inverse)
Funny how in spite of our efforts to “Not Meet” Chris and I ended up at the same school, Richland College, after I graduated from North Garland High School. And after I moved to San Antonio, Chris ended up working at my old high school as a tutor and even met some of my old classmates.
But it was through those exchanges that I was turned on to a folk singing duo called the Indigo Girls. In fact, it was their soulful, insightful lyrics and their wonderful 12-string guitars that comforted me during times of heartbreak and made me appreciate the beauty of nature and love.
By then – Y2K hit and he and I lived in other cities. I even went farther and moved to Hawaii then back to Texas again. We each went our separate ways, doing our own projects, starting our own families and glimpsing each other’s happenings on Facebook.
But today, 20 years later, on March 11, 2016 – I look back and realize that Spring of 1996, on March 11, and recall just how much fun that time was for me. Who knew being stuck at home, and a chance encounter on the party line, would open up another world for me? Meeting other minds, particularly that of Chris Mueller, whose conversation on music and “infliction tapes” led to my being a deejay for San Antonio College 90.1 FM , which later paved the way to my current projects in the broadcast media and video production field. So on this 3-11 day, I raise a toast of Pepsi Clear and Coke II, to my friend Chris Mueller, the Dallas Observer, those telephone chat lines of olden days, and the Indigo Girls.
