new guy coming out

Welcome to the forum! I' m new here to!
:smilewave

 

Well hello! ^_^
My name's Jacob, nice to meet you.
The people here are very marvelous specimens indeed, I'm sure they will all make you feel very welcome, and congrats on coming out! ^_^
Hope you enjoy yourself here!

 

Hello Panda:
I'm new here too, so I can relate to the scary part. I have a friend who can out, newly-divorced at 61. He thought his life was over. On his 65th b-day, he toasted the people surrounding him, telling us how great his life has become. And, lol, his sex life was was far more interesting than mine.
Hang in there,
Bill

 

Hello and welcome Panda.

 

Hello and welcome!^^ Call me Gera-Kun if you wish!^^

 

hi welcome to EC hope you enjoy it:icon_bigg

 

Hi and Welcome to empty closets(!) (!)

I think you gonna have a lot of fun here!! And also any advises or supports will be appreciated

Hope to see you around:smilewave

 

Hi Panda - Welcome to EC!

 

Hi Panda, welcome to EC

Well, I'm sure you are happy when you accept yourself and feel teh freedome

And I'm sure you'll find lots of support here for your coming out, you may feel it's scary now, but I'm sure you'll succeed

 

Welcome to EC!!!!!!
I hope you like it here. As for lol, It is an acronym for "laughing out loud" or "laugh out loud" Welcome to EC and have fun

 

Hi and welcome to EC!

 

howdy

 

Hia panda!!
WW

 

Hi and Welcome :smilewave

 

Welcome.. Let us know if you need anything.

 

The smiley faces etc are just ways of expressing emotion. Sometimes with written stuff you lose the feedback you'd get from looking at the other person's face, so you can't tell whether they are joking or serious etc. So in the early days of email people started using to represent smiling, ;-) for winking, :-( for sad etc (they are sideways).

Forum software like this took it a lot further by showing them as images and allowing us to have loads of them. So :icon_bigg and are just the person smiling, :icon_wink is winking, :icon_sad: is sad, :icon_redf is embarassed, (*hug*) is giving you a hug etc. If you hold your mouse pointer over any you don't understand it should tell you what they are.

All the ones in the replies are happy - smiling, waving, and even the dancing bananas! People are pleased to see you and are welcoming you.

No, I don't know who came up with dancing bananas, but we like them here!
(!) (!!) (!) (!!) (!)

 

Hey - Welcome Panda :smilewave

Always good to have someone new to add to our diversity here - and, yes, they're a great crowd here...I hope you'll enjoy the place!