A Brief History of my Internal Love Affair

My love affair with computers began in junior high. There were no computers in our school, so the first time I saw one was in the home of our wealthy neighbor. I never wanted to take apart anything so badly in my entire life! Using a program called Print Shop, you could even use the computer to print out a banner! WOW!

The other thing you could do was make a little stick figure man go up and down the stairs of his stick figure home and answer the door. It was amazing!

The introduction of computers into schools came about during my high school years. While I certainly played my share of Oregon Trail, no one in the school had a clue as to how these things worked. Finally, my first year of college, I used a student loan to buy my very own PC. The first thing I did after turning it on and booting it up (a 30 minute procedure) was to turn it off and take it apart. SWEET!

Then I loaded Prodigy and the rest of my love affair with the internet is history. My son was three at the time and could click and scroll before he knew how to tie his shoe.

I see him now, 17 and a senior in high school. He's just as fascinated as I was. I was so proud of him in junior high, the way he secretly loaded Firefox onto all the school lab computers and deleted IE. My baby!

I can't imagine what the world must be like for him. Growing up with computers and never being without the internet. No wonder he feels as if there isn't anything he can't learn.