To my sincere and caring friends selling me their crap:
I will soon be leaving. I am slowly disappearing. It is with deep
regret, relief and an overall feeling of shame that I write this. This
is not a suicide note, though, but rather a statement of intent with
which I hope to inform you why I am leaving.

You courted me with lies for a long time, and it is only now that I
realize it. I thought you loved me. You remembered my name (though
always forgot how to pronounce it) and you always found out where I
lived. You were punctual, and though you were kind of pushy, you
always professed to have my best interest in mind.

I am no longer fooled, though. I am leaving every one of you.

I have joined too many of your CD and book clubs, have fallen prey to
too many free issues of Sports Illustrated and switched long-distance
phone service for the last time. I have paid off my credit card and
have canceled it. One bulk mailing and telemarketing company at a
time, my name is being erased.

It will be easy to give up some things, such as the little product
registration surveys you get when you buy a new appliance. My credit
card was easily disposed of as well, no longer tempting me with its
instant gratification and delayed suffering. As far as magazines, who
really reads Rolling Stone any more anyway?

The most difficult item to relinquish will be the Internet. For years
I have been provided with semi-factual information, e-mail and, of
course, free porn. I will need to relearn the inner workings of
libraries and reference books.

I will miss the New York Times online, StrangeSearch, unlimited music
downloads and everything else convenient and free. The amount to which
I anticipate missing all of this suggests a dependency I am not even
ready to explore.

What then, is the gain, you ask? I am not certain, really. I know that
for the past 24 years I have been neatly tracked and itemized into
various files with labels such as "white," "total income $20-40,000 a
year," "married," "student," "likes baseball" and perhaps even
"listens to Elvis Costello" and "likes naked women." I don't really
know if these types of labels exist, but if the sometimes too-specific
and eerily interesting bulk mailings and mass e-mails are any
indication, I think they do.

I realize that this is a lifelong process. It is impossible to
determine who has records on me. Can I truly disappear and still get
mail? What about taxes and the health insurance I wish I had?

Arguing against new media such as the Internet is akin to 17th-century
arguments against novels or the later proliferation of the radio and
telephone, you will say. But please know, this is just something I
have to do. It's not you, it's me.

Perhaps this is an inherited desire. I know too well that this sort of
thing has been done before.

My own father, for example, left suddenly though quietly when I was 12
and has been unreachable ever since. The sole record of his existence
since then has been bills forwarded to me, his unfortunate namesake.
So I have already been forced to shed one existence. This knowledge of
the inner workings of credit agencies and banks will come in handy
during the coming years.

From here the future is uncertain. I will finish school and hopefully
slip from the university's records. Whether or not I will forever be
in the sights of the Iowa State University Foundation as a rich and
possibly philanthropic alumnus is unknown.

Perhaps I will slip quietly and easily from everyone's radar. Perhaps
I will lose touch with what is real and practical. Perhaps I will end
up in the desert discussing morality.

Perhaps I will fail.

The most important thing for me to realize is the selfishness and
impracticality of this all, just to keep everything else in
perspective, right?

I will, from time to time, let you know how I am doing. To cut you out
completely seems unfair. You will probably always know where I am. If
there is an emergency, please contact my assistant (really my wife,
Anne). From time to time I may even update you on how I am doing.

Goodbye, Hotmail and freexxxpicshotladies.com. Adieu BankCard services
with your 0.9 percent interest for the first six months with a
pre-approved $10,000 credit limit. So long, 12 free CDs for the price
of one. From here on out, you are dead to me.

I will have my computer, and though you may argue that it is
paradoxical and hypocritical of me to retain any remnant of a
technology I now despise, I will still use it to write and play
solitaire.

One more thing. Please remove me from your list.

Sincerely,

P. L. O'Bryan

(C) 2002 Iowa State Daily via U-WIRE