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IT STARTED IN COLD WEATHER;
fall was drifting away into an intolerable chill. I was on the tail
end of twenty-six, living in New York City, and trying to support
myself as a writer. One morning I logged on to my America Online
account to find a message under the heading "is this the real
meghan daum?" It came from someone with the screen name PFSlider.
The body of the message consisted of five sentences, written
entirely in lowercase letters, of perfectly turned flattery,
something about PFSlider's admiration of some newspaper and
magazine articles I had published over the last year and a half,
something else about his resulting infatuation with me, and
something about his being a sportswriter in California.
I was charmed for a moment or so, engaged for the thirty seconds
that it took me to read the message and fashion a reply. Though it
felt strange to be in the position of confirming that I was indeed
"the real meghan daum," I managed to say, "Yes, it's me. Thank you
for writing." I clicked the "Send Now" icon and shot my words into
the void, where I forgot about PFSlider until the next day when I
received another message, this one entitled "eureka." "wow, it is
you," he wrote, still in lowercase. He chronicled the various
conditions under which he'd read my few and far between articles:
a boardwalk in Laguna Beach, the spring training pressroom for the
baseball team he covered for a Los Angeles newspaper. He confessed
to having a "crazy crush" on me. He referred to me as "princess
daum." He said he wanted to propose marriage or at least have
lunch with me during one of his two annualtripsto New York.
He managed to do all of this without sounding like a schmuck.
As I read the note, I smiled the kind of smile one tries to
suppress, the kind of smile that arises during a sappy movie
one never even admits to seeing. The letter was outrageous and
endearingly pathetic, possibly the practical joke of a friend
trying to rouse me out of a temporary writer's block. But the
kindness pouring forth from my computer screen was unprecedented
and bizarrely exhilarating. I logged off and thought about it for
a few hours before writing back to express how flattered and
touched — this was probably the first time I had ever used the word
"touched" in earnest — I was by his message.
Reprinted with permission
from My Misspent Youth
Copyright © 2001
by Meghan Daum
Open City Books
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Bibliography
