Post your stories about the Barrow-Downs here

[Galadriel55]

If there is something the Downs has no lack of, it's stories of how it's affected people's lives. Anyone can enter (spammers excluded, thank Eru ), but not everyone will leave the same man as they came in, etc etc. I've pretty much grown up on this site. You know how people talk about teens nowadays being idiots on Facebook? Well, I never had Facebook, so I was an idiot on the Downs instead - an even bigger idiot than I am now, if that can be believed, and you can find the evidence in the virtual archaeological digs of the early 2010's. But a fact that may be as much of a surprise to some people as the lack of FB for someone of my generation is that when I joined the Downs I didn't know how to type. All kids nowadays know how to type, right? Not me. Well, I've typed before, I knew how to press the buttons... But I was still doing the snail-pace one-finger technique that makes you cringe when you see it done. Hence, among other teenage quirks, you might find among my early posts little shortcuts like "Gandy" for "Gandalf" - because back then shortening a word by two letters actually made a difference. I would have learned to type sooner or later regardless; I was starting high school, where assignments were increasingly required to be typed rather than handwritten, it would have happened at some point. But I am of the firm opinion that I became a fast typer in those first few months due to the practice of writing multiple posts a day on this site (yes, multiple - I was averaging 8 at one point and was a proud spammer of threads). It was certainly a much more pleasant (and voluntary) was of learning than the school forcing me to type up assignments. So that's another accidental merit that the Downs can add to its crown of virtues.