crazygirlOG 2001

The name was a declaration, not a warning. Heather Prior joined eZabel in November 2001 as a fourteen-year-old from Hopatcong, New Jersey who baked chocolate pecan cookies at midnight, punched strangers by accident at sports arcade games, and once whispered every sentence to herself before saying it out loud — just to make sure it made sense. "Hi, how are you?" she'd murmur, then a little louder: "Hi, how are you?" Her friend raerae confirmed she still did this years later. She was the middle Prior sister — older than Ashley, younger than legs (Amanda) — and together they formed a small hurricane of sisterly chaos that included Amanda sneezing and burping on her simultaneously, buying fireworks in Pennsylvania that sailed over a neighbor's fence, and the time Heather told the entire site about three-year-old Amanda stripping naked in the Macy's lingerie section to try on bras. Amanda's response was instant: "Anyone wanna hear some interesting stuff about this crazy girl here????"

Her 429 comments were concentrated almost entirely in 2002 — 402 of them landed in that single explosive year — and they had a particular flavor: anecdotal, warm, slightly breathless, always building toward a punchline she was already laughing at before she finished typing. She was the girl who ran a bake sale by literally flagging down cars in the road until one driver told her, "Considering I almost ran you over, I'll have..." She was the kid who went onstage during a presentation and lifted her dress to announce, "Hey everybody, look at my new underwear!" — Donald Duck, for the record — and never lived it down. She told telemarketers her mom was out feeding the llamas: "We have a couple hundred and it might take a few hours." She once fell off a bike rack face-first into the pavement with her feet still wrapped through the bars, producing an egg on her forehead that lasted a week. She was, as she readily admitted, "deffinitly crazy — hence the name."

Heather's social world revolved around the Stanhope/Hackettstown congregation crew, a tight-knit New Jersey circle that included malibu, thatdarngirl (Lindsay), raerae (Rachel), and Amanda. malibu summed it up best: the four of them hung out so constantly that they were "no longer treated like guests at each other's houses and are just family." Her top interaction partner was g.f.s.rocks (Giacomo), followed closely by thefunkyfresh (Matt Kelly) and rocksupastar (Mike Schiano) — Matt once called her "BRILLIANT" for free-associating "spaceship" from a word game, which was both sarcastic and accurate. She and punkprincess (Tina) were inseparable in those early months — excited recaps of local shows, debates about Tigger song lyrics, baking updates, and the kind of rapid-fire check-ins that defined teenage friendship before texting killed the art form. She introduced herself to California members like ekulu with genuine curiosity, introduced herself to every new user with an Alice in Wonderland "Whooo areee youuu?", and told iwz she was "pretty pathetic" for not knowing how to check someone's profile — then asked him how to make a link a month later.

Beneath the slapstick was a person with real moral conviction. When the site piled on a user for being too emotional, Heather cut through the noise: "Hey guys, maybe that's how she is and that's ok. You don't have to bash her down because of it." When a journal entry stirred drama, she pushed back directly: "Considering we are all brothers and sisters here, we're supposed to treat each other LOVINGLY!" thatdarngirl backed her up both times, calling out the pile-on while Heather had already said it more simply and more effectively. She wrote about being grateful for growing up in the truth, about a documentary of a boy with no arms who learned to drive with his feet, about the unfairness of middle school girls and the cruelty of peer pressure — all with the earnestness of someone who hadn't yet learned to be cynical about earnestness. She attended thirteen eZabel events, from the original party to Band From Society shows to manhunt games, and her journal about brownies for the eZabel gathering — walnuts or no walnuts? — generated the kind of wholesome poll that the site needed between its theological debates and flame wars.

eZabel Personality Type: ESFJ — "The Caretaker." She moved away in late 2002, journaling about how sad it was to pack up old memories, but found excitement in decorating a new room with a secret attic trapdoor. She drifted from the site after that — a brief return in 2003 earned a "Hey! Welcome back to eZabel :)" from iwz, and a lonely 2005 post about spotting large Frosty cups at Wendy's was her last recorded thought. But for that one blazing year, Heather Prior was the person who made brownies for the party, defended the underdog in the comments, whispered her sentences twice, and genuinely wanted to know how you were doing — even if she had to flag you down in traffic to ask.