Springfield, IL - Carl Zimmerman never intended to ruffle anyone's feathers when he purchased his first personal computer and hopped online in the spring of 1998. The first few months of his new venture proved fruitful, an establish email address, an Amazon.com account, and for a short while, www.carlzimmermanworld.net. Things took an ugly turn just four months after Carl began his work on "the big WWW".
It seems that instead of adhering to the gentle ebb and flow of the upper and lowercase guidelines of the English language, Carl balked. "One day I was typing out my grocery list and I wanted to remember to get soap so I typed ‘S-O-A-P'," explained Zimmerman. "It looked so good in its boldness, and trying to remember what to capitalize with stuff like Oil of Olay was pretty pointless if you ask me."
"Besides," says the newly single Zimmerman "it really lets you get your point across. Kind of a not-so-subtle subtle reminder of who's swinging the big cods around here."
Like the raging flood that starts with a drop of water, Carl's caps lock obsession began destroying everything in its rules-of-common-electronic-interaction-decency pathway. At first many of Zimmerman's friends were accepting of the large uniform text. "I just thought ‘That's Carl being Carl. He's short on time," says carpool buddy Jim Tedesky.
In time though the problem grew to be as large as a bold "Q". Carl Zimmerman began to abbreviate everything. "THX" for instead of thanks, "YOUR" instead of you're. It became a nightmare for all of those that had cyber contact with the 46-year-old long haul logistics manager.
Not only have there been numerous problems with emailing friends, Carl admits his caps addiction has all but decimated his e-love life. "I find that most of the women out there are frightened by what they feel as me coming on too strong. The larger girls that post their profiles three and four times don't seem to mind as much, but you can only take so much of a good thing," smirked Zimmerman.
What was once a fairly large e-address book has dwindled to a handful of friends, most of which don't check their mail regularly. Carl's sister Sarah couldn't stand the uneasy way in which the text presented itself. "I didn't know if he was excited, or mad, or what. It finally became too much strain to bear."
Life will continue for Carl Zimmerman, and if he has anything to do with it so will big, beautiful, bold letters.
