-- Wednesday, July 7, 1999 --

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12:36 p.m. As you go about trying to construct your web personality, you have several options. You flip through potential voices and outfits to see what fits, and you sit there, stumped: Who will want to read this? How do I find my voice? Crabby fingers around "voice" because suddenly I'm shy and pawing the ground ... who is out there? ... and will they rip me to shreds? They always have; they always will. Yet, if you want to write, you have to go on, marching bravely like a Christian to the pit, clutching your tattered rags and shreds of righteousness across your heaving, panting, vulnerable breasts.

Are we having fun yet?

You see, I'm trying to figure out how to post to the boisterous diary-l mailing list and I'm just not sure when? Now? Later? It's exactly like jump rope -- you have to know when to jump in, when to get out of the way. My old friend Mary Margaret McDonald from St. Michael's in Chester, Pa. was always an "ender" because she claimed she got a bloody nose from jumping. She even had a doctor's note. And a working father, so who could dispute her inalienable right to pull rank?

Historians teach that jumping rope goes all the way back to ancient Egypt -- as usual -- when the fleet-footed official messengers had to get past the lumbering rope makers, who in turn had to spread their probably papyrial strands out and spin the long twists in the air. The messengers had no choice but to jump in and not miss the beat as the slowly looping rope brushed long and heavy, electric as a downed wire, swishing up and pounding down as it slapped through the ancient yellow dust.

Some time ago, while watching the spinning circles and waiting through the long dusty years, somewhere in there I lost my nerve. I lost the rhythm of the songs we used to sing when we were kids and we were jumping. Lost the rhythm, lost the words. And the longer you stand on the sidelines watching the other kids jump in, the harder and stranger it gets. I mean, there are kids these days who can do it on one foot, double-dutch, sucking a black-netted bottle of San Pelligrino the whole time.

It's been sobering to find out, via the wave after wave of voices that fill the newsgroups, that not everybody thinks like me. There are a lot of people out there; there are people younger than my own children who are totally capable of typing and e-mailing the snappy and really nasty reposte; there are people who have a completely different view of the world than I do. What a surprise, kind of. It's as if you could suddenly read the thoughts of the crowd on the boardwalk as they stand milling around, watching a guy trying to juggle two live chainsaws and a ferret. You're totally absorbed. Enchanted. Agog.

They're thinking: "I'm not impressed."

So, you become an ender for as long as you can stand it. Holding the rope and keeping it turning for the more limber, the braver, the younger. Until that fine day comes when you lose your mind and regain your nerve and you, too, jump in.

Tomorrow -- here's a hint: tilt your head back and for God's sake, keep the tissue on it. It'll stop soon enough.