You basically described my life during junior high. That same type of phenomenon happened often before I finally convinced my Mom to upgrade to DSL, with the excuse that I could find homework help on AOL even quicker, which is true, but I had ulterior motives. I really just wanted to play Starcraft online with real people without a crappy connection.

I was a single child and had zero friends within a 3-mile radius. Video games were a close friend back then.