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Ever since the Internet turned 40, we've been reminiscing about the early days of the Web -- by-the-hour dial-up, Prodigy chat rooms and Geocities home pages.

Reading NPR's piece about listeners' first Internet experiences got us thinking about our first forays onto the 'Net, and our first fledgling cyber-identities. So we asked Asylum contributors to tell us their very first (inevitably embarrassing) screen names. Read ours and then tell us yours in the comments.

Nick: I was a huge nerd for the Sandman comics, so mine was something like Morpheus7819. I forgot the exact number, but I know it had a ton of numbers because I was clearly not the first person to choose that screen name.

Scott: I admit that mine was neoscott -- and this was years before "The Matrix." I had gotten into the habit of labeling my floppy disks for storing my writing "neoscottyland" for whatever reason, and I always thought "neo" was a cool add-on. Years later, it looks even more embarrassing than it was. (It's still my screen name.)

Brian: My first screen name was Blondebeard because my dad set it up for me. It was the first week I had to shave.

Ryan: cowboyoutcast ... NOT because I was a cowboy, but because I lived in a small town in Northern Arizona where all the cowboys regularly beat me up. However, most people I talked to online thought that meant I was a cowboy and tried to talk to me about rodeos and s**t. I hated high school, even online.

Tommy: Mine was Thinslice, which was an overly complicated in-joke with myself. It was 1987, when I was a rail-thin 130 lbs., worked at a deli, and (had always been) into hip-hop music. It was a play on "homeslice," a familiar greeting of the time. Yep, I'm an enormous dork.

Dan: I was a little goth kid, and mine was Shadowplay. It was from a Joy Division song, whom I'd discovered after Trent Reznor sang one of their songs on the "Crow" soundtrack. I used it on a local BBS that occasionally had meet-ups, and I was stuck with it even after I grew out of the goth phase a few months later. The real-life friends with whom I would attend these functions got a huuuuuge kick out of introducing me to girls. "Hey, Stacy, this is 'Shadowplay'." Of course, all of them took their names from, like, "Hitchhiker's Guide" and Monty Python, so it's not like "Zaphod" had any cause to cast aspersions, but the weird shame of a 15-year-old ex-goth kid, especially in front of unimpressed girls, is a very real thing. Naturally, I went home and changed it to TheKingOfMetal after that.

Gabrus: Srfrat69 because I surfed and little kids who surfed were surfrats. I was 69 because I just learned what that was (and it was my soccer number). Though in chat rooms everyone thought I was a senior in college that was in a frat that enjoyed double oral sex.

Michael: maidenrocks ... because, well, have you ever heard "Number of the Beast"?

Emerald: Um. Mine was whyme26xs. I was really into Vonnegut, because I was in high school, and he wrote something about how "Why me?" was a very human question or something. I suppose I was feeling pretty human after about a bajillion permutations of my name didn't work.

Jordan: grruff182 "grruff" was a sound my friend made when Goro flexed his muscles in "Mortal Kombat." He would roll the "rr" and sort of sing it in a ascending vocal line. "182" -- Blink 182 fan. Still am. Don't judge. They write catchy music.

Tell us, what was your very first screen name?