To the Return of ATS

[BIAD]

Same for me. I joined ATS around 2007-2009 I never can remember without looking lol. I never posted one time on there I just read what everyone else was discussing, too shy to add anything to those discussions...

It was some time just after the beginning of the 2000s, when I first tapped on the door of ATS. My name was 'IronMan' and
I tended to steer clear of things I had no idea about. I didn't have top-clearance in some shadowy Air-Base in a desert nor knew
any influential people from a monthly gathering at the Skull & Bones Society, I was just someone working alone in a room with
one light-bulb and digitally-altering images for a local newspaper.

On the plus-side, it was one of those long industrial fluorescent lights, so I shouldn't really complain.


Anyway, I found a thread that attempted to seriously discuss the outcome if a human had to fight hand-to-hand with a Grey-Alien...
and look back, I used the word 'seriously' there. Intrigued that these few well-meaning folk were striving to arrive at a fair solution,
I 'lurked' -a term I always felt had something to do with one's hand down one's shorts in an darkened alleyway behind the home of
an Alpha-chick from school. If you know what I mean.


Then a revelation appeared that -not only rocketed me into writing fantasy tales, but also filled me with so much levity that I let my
guard down towards those passionless and derisory folk who used to man the watchtowers of TOS. One of the members related
he'd heard that aliens are adverse to having human urine making contact with their skin. Oh-my -I hear you exclaim, an act that
makes us part of the brethren of the Universe. In general, many of the inhabitants of Earth don't enjoy being pissed-on either.


During one of my across-the-topic discussions with this whistle-blower, a young Graphic Artist visited my lone outpost and noticed
the subject of my drafted chat. He became so intrigued with the issue that from his own desk, he monitored the ongoing exchange.
It wasn't long before this fellow-worker introduced himself into the conference and offered his light-hearted opinion on why the
occupants of interplanetary craft held disdain towards hominid liquid body-waste, now there were two of us.


But later, he moved some of his work down to a computer on my floor and during one of our hopefully-amusing colloquial prattles
about urine and how one would think the off-worlders would design a barrier to protect themselves from the splashing ammunition,
my colleague finished one of my sentences for a giggle.


That was when the balloon went up. The next evening, I found that I'd been banned from the website for using two accounts and
talking to myself. Back then -because I don't know what is like now, I could respond to the allegation and explain the real situation.
But it was no good, they assured me they were correct and cast me into the wilderness of the internet... and didn't even bother
to close the Graphic Artist's account.


But when one endures the traumatic suffering of working beneath a single bulb -fluorescent or not, we knew we were made of
grittier stuff to be discarded like a used tissue. Nay, with backing from the young man who had heard me read aloud as I'd typed
and finished the sentence via his own account, we plotted to rise again on the platform.


Sitting at my ancient computer (those screens are heavy, yer' know?) my fellow-schemer typed in a new application form and
turned to me with a question. "What do you wish to call yourself?" he asked and seeing where the future was going from the
many perusals of the website's threads, I smirked and answered with "Boy In A Dress" and so, the underwear-resisting maniac
who chitters and grins in my little garden shed was born.