My First Computer

non-fiction

I remember getting my first computer, the excitement I had, all of it. I loved it because it was all mine.
I got it from my mother's friend who had an autistic child who watched a lot of VHS tapes. It was used, but free and I loved it.
It was a Windows '95 or '98, not sure which, but it was heavy, a monitor that weighed more than me. I remember bringing it home and assembling it in my room and how I just loved putting the pieces together myself. I loved opening and closing the disc drive, the hum of the monitor, the special sounds it made on start up, the loading screens and the little words that said, "IT IS NOW SAFE TO TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER". I wanted to keep my computer on forever, but my mother wouldn't let me. I had to turn it off every night.

I wrote novels on my computer. I'd open up the Word knockoff I had and just type and type and type for hours and I didn't care what came out. I wrote a story that was a Paperboy knockoff and one called 20,000 Pennies Under the Duckpond that was about guinea pigs and hamsters that lived on a farm and had to find some money. They were terrible stories and I never finished them, but they felt so good to write.

I had Juno, which was like AOL only so simple and pathetic it only allowed you to check email. You couldn't even get on the internet with it for anther three years. I'd check my mail all the time, but I never got anything so I'd email myself. It took forever to get them.
I'd hack onto my mom's Juno account and email her friends long-winded stories I wrote, mostly re-tellings of faerie tales so they were funny. Or at least so I would laugh. I wanted my stories to be like the chain emails that my mom forwarded to me and I forwarded to myself.

Fuck solitaire! On my computer, I played hours of games (that came with it somehow) like WinBreakOut '95 and I'd install dollar-store floppy disc games. A few times, if they sucked, I'd erase them off the floppy disc and reuse it.

But what I remember most is it had awesome screensavers of pipes and a maze thing and I loved customizing those. I'd change them every hour and then wait for the computer to start them up. It came with these themes, like the Jungle Theme and the Space Theme and it would change all the colors and the cursors and the sounds when the computer started up, loaded up and fucked up.

Really, all I liked to do was mod the shit out of it. It was mine and that was a powerful feeling, knowing I had something so useful all to myself. I felt privelegded. My computer could do anything! I mean, it didn't have internet or any music on it or anything but it still felt amazing to me.

But the computer didn't have a lot of hard drive space. So what did I do? What any kid would. I went into the :C drive and deleted any files I thought I didn't need. Such as old games, themes I didn't use and . . . system files.

After that my computer didn't work anymore. I totally fucked it up and lost everything. But somehow, I didn't really care.

The other day, I bought a new computer for a C-note. Got it for a song, really. It's an eMac with a thousand features that my old '98 never had, even if the eMac is a couple years outdated. It doesn't have a very big hard drive but I'm not about to delete anything I shouldn't.

Anyway, I got kinda giddy again, buying it. I started to feel like I used to, like my computer was the best thing in the world.

But then it faded after a day.

Still, I'm gonna keep my computer on all the time, deep into the night.