I am very fortunate in that my parents (especially my mother) approve of the Barrow-Downs. They realize that I'm not going to do anything stupid like give out my real name, my age, my phone number, or any location more specific than the city and state I live in (there are over 200,000 people in it, so it's not like I'd be easy to track down just going on that.) Due to my time here I've become a much better typist (I've gone from being absolutely terrible to only moderately bad
) and a better writer (I now cringe to see some of my early posts). I've really become more outgoing from my time here, too. Normally I am very shy and hardly talk around people I don't know well, but not so here. I've also learned tons about different parts of the world and other cultures due to the fact that the BDer's come from all different places. The 'Downs is an education in itself!