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Before my family bought our first computer eight years ago, our computing experience was very limited.

In 1998, some friends gave us a Packard-Bell 286 personal computer from the late 1980s that later had been upgraded from DOS to Windows 3.0. Though we could not connect to the Internet with that computer, we did get our feet wet by learning to turn it on and off and playing a few simple games. By today's standards, it could best be described as a glorified typewriter.

I remember when they built the new downtown library in Greensboro. The kids and I made frequent trips there to try out the computers connected to the Internet. It amuses me to remember that I had to ask one of the library workers if it was OK to accept "cookies."

In March of 2000, we opened the box to our first "real" computer at home. I was thankful for the picture poster in the box that showed me that the red plug went into the red slot and that the yellow went into the yellow hole and so on. Without that huge instruction sheet, I might still be staring at all the pieces in the box with confusion. Instead, we opened the lid to the world right here in our house.

By connecting the computer to our phone jack, we signed on to AOL to get to the Internet. For the first time, we heard the word "Welcome" as the welcome screen loaded. We soon became accustomed to the sweet words "You've got mail" each time we logged on to our account.

At first I was reluctant to enter the chat room area. I had heard about the horrors of the Internet. But eventually curiosity got the best of me, and I made up a chat name and entered a few rooms. I landed in a relatively safe one and started making online friends there.

One of my favorite stories from that time involves a couple who lived in Michigan. Joe and Stacey were in the same ages and stages as we were. They had young children, and at that time, Stacey was a stay-at-home mom like me. Joe was a washer/dryer repairman studying to be a pastor. We got to know them in the chat room, then exchanging e-mails and Instant Messages. We exchanged pictures of our families while talking about everything and anything.

Given that our husbands were slower at typing, often it was us, the wives, who would type what our husbands wanted to say to each other. My husband and I would sit in front of our computer while Joe and Stacey sat in front of theirs in Michigan. They had the same kind of sense of humor we do.

About this time, our dryer broke. It stopped heating up. In some general conversation, I must have mentioned our dryer had broken. Joe generously offered to talk us through the repair via Instant Messaging if we wanted to repair it ourselves. He told us what part to get from the store, and we set up a time to log on to the computer so that he could walk us through the repair step by step.

The night we were to do the repair, I sat at our computer while my husband set up his tools in the hallway where our dryer is. Joe and Stacey logged on.

Joe told Stacey what to type. She hit "send." I read the instruction to my husband as it came through in an instant message. As my husband had questions, I typed those in as we went along. The process was repeated until the whole repair was done.

Unfortunately, a few years after meeting Joe and Stacey, we lost contact with them. They changed their Internet service after Joe became a pastor in Traverse City, Mich.

I was reminded of them this spring as our clothes dryer stopped heating clothes again. We'll have to repair it solo this time. The first repair, however, never would have taken place in this unique way without the Internet. The Internet has given us opportunities to meet people from around the world we would have never known otherwise. It's simply amazing to me that the world is literally at my fingertips daily.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.