specialkOG 2003

The name was Keirsten Rosa Leigh Gabardy — her parents apparently deciding that a first name nobody could pronounce wasn't quite enough of a challenge, so they threw in two middle names for good measure. "They did the same sort of thing with my brother. Weirdos." She arrived on eZabel in December 2003 from West Chester, Ohio, twenty-three years old, married to Adam, mother to a five-year-old named Tyler, and already carrying enough life experience to fill a memoir. Rebellious teenager, pregnant at eighteen, biological father gone, whole existence rebuilt around her son and her faith. Tyler was born July 13, 1999. She was baptized July 1, 2000. Adam — a longtime family friend she'd crushed on since she was fourteen, given up on, and then reconnected with seven years later — adopted Tyler after they married. She called it her second chance and meant it literally. The telling detail: she kept her tattoo, a Kokopelli design, as a reminder of who she used to be. "I wasn't a nice person when I got the tattoo, but 7 years later, I've done a complete 180, and seeing the tattoo keeps that fresh in my mind." Part Native American — Cherokee on her father's side — she'd chosen the design deliberately. She was the kind of person who refused to pretend the past hadn't happened.

With 2,046 comments across five years, specialk was one of eZabel's most prolific voices, and her writing style was unmistakable: long, warm, detail-rich, unapologetically personal, and always ending with a smiley face or a self-aware acknowledgment that she was rambling. She posted everywhere — 568 comments in Musings, 391 in General Chat, 111 in Macking, 97 in Movies and Television, 96 in Food — and shared threads with 125 different members, which made her one of the site's most connected users. Her peak year was 2004, when she dropped 995 comments, essentially narrating her entire life in real time: the artichoke spinach dip at the restaurant where she served, the aerobics instructor gig where she wrangled thirteen kids alone, the Avon business she ran from home, the wedding planning she did for friends because she genuinely adored weddings and aspired to do it professionally. She once planned her own entire wedding in under three months, assigning each couple in the bridal party a personalized entrance song. Adam's dad — his best man, a man who loved building things — walked in to the Home Improvement theme. Her brother strutted in to a track from Cowboy Bebop. "Needless to say the bridesmaid that walked with him was thoroughly embarrassed."

Her engagement story was peak specialk: Adam flew her to Phoenix under the pretense of celebrating his parents' anniversary. He spent the entire trip acting moody and distant, telling her he "wasn't happy with things the way they were." She spent the whole time thinking he was about to dump her — "If he thinks that by breaking up with me HERE, that I won't make a scene, BOY is he wrong!!!" — until he walked her to a spot overlooking all of Phoenix and got down on one knee. His entire family had been in on it. She bawled. She told this story on eZabel the way she told every story: every beat, every emotion, every aside, holding nothing back. That openness was both her superpower and her vulnerability. When magnum publicly criticized her for oversharing, she responded with one of the most honest posts anyone ever wrote on the site: "Put yourself in my shoes for even one minute... the people you feel closest to, who seem to 'get' you the best, live hundreds of miles away, and you only get to talk to them online." She wasn't asking for pity. She was explaining why eZabel mattered to her.

Her tastes were confident and specific: Levi low-rise stretch jeans, Josh Groban, P.F. Chang's, purple as a color, butter pecan ice cream tied with peppermint, Imogen Heap ("the 8th wonder of the world"), the smell of early fall, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Douglas Coupland novels borrowed from Adam — Girlfriend in a Coma, All Families Are Psychotic, Microserfs — and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She devoured The O.C., followed Alias closely enough to catch plot holes in Alicia's death scene, debated Star Wars midichlorian theory, and once typed out the entirety of Weird Al's "Yoda" song in a forum thread. She auditioned for a Sit n Spin commercial at age four but got too dizzy. "They gave me gum, though. When you are 4 gum is like a million dollars." She and her brother used to jump off the back of the couch onto pillows pretending to be wrestlers — until her brother tried to perform Razor Ramon's finishing move on her. "Not fun for Keirsten."

Her top interaction partners were fivezero and socalgal, but she built real friendships across the whole site — with iwz, juicymango, thatdarngirl, forrestina, originalsnob, and many others. She remembered every detail of everyone's lives and freely admitted it. She was the person who showed up in your journal with scripture references and practical advice when you were struggling, who told ilikebirds she forgave him for neglecting to visit when he was in Ohio because he still cracked her up, who told skaorsk8 to talk to her brother about cars because "he's cool like dat." When Dan tried to steal her husband with a bear hug at an eZabel gathering — "I introduced them, and I told Dan 'this is my husband Adam.' Next thing I know, Dan has him in a full-on bear hug. I'll admit... I was ticked." — she wrote it up with mock outrage that was clearly delight. She attended 14 eZabel events, drove from Ohio to New Jersey for parties, and when she eventually moved to Arizona in 2006, she made sure to swing through the East Coast first. She was that kind of person: she kept track, she showed up, she remembered.

The Arizona move was the great final act of her eZabel story. She and Adam relocated to Fountain Hills, near his family, and she documented everything — the monsoon humidity, the tarantula by the front door ("I literally almost put my hand ON the tarantula"), the king snake in her bedroom ("Doesn't that only happen in like, India?"), the tailless whipscorpion on her patio wall, the job hunt that ended with a position at the Mayo Clinic, and Tyler's rough adjustment to a new school where a bully made him not want to go and another kid's mother told him to his face he wasn't her son's friend. Through it all she kept posting, kept praying, kept auxiliary pioneering, kept cooking Cincinnati-style chili with cinnamon and brown sugar for anyone who'd try it. She was simultaneously tough and tender — a woman who could trap a snake under a shoe box and carry it outside, then cry when a coworker said something mean. "What's funny is, I used to be TOUGH... I still can, but now I cry... a lot, hahaha." She worked hard, juggled multiple jobs, killed people with kindness, had zero patience for gossip or men who thought a wedding ring was "just some glass and metal," and loved her boys — all of them, the husband and the son and the three mini dachshunds — with a ferocity that came through in every post she wrote.

eZabel Personality Type: ESFJ — "The Wedding Planner." Warm, organized, socially attuned, and deeply motivated by care for others — but with a spine made of something considerably harder than kindness. She knew exactly what the rules were, had thought carefully about which ones she agreed with and why, and operated accordingly. She shared more of herself than most people would dare, not because she lacked boundaries but because she believed that being known was better than being safe. The heart of a community person in the truest sense: not someone who needed everyone to like her, but someone who wanted everyone to be okay — and who would drive nine hours across three states to make sure of it.