In 1981 I was a junior in high school, and I couldn’t figure out algebra.
I fared well the previous year in Geometry, but God damned algebra kicked my ass. What aggravated me the most was how easy the text book examples were, but when the book threw the actual problems at us…well, forget about it.
It was the only “D” I ever earned, and trust me, I earned it. It was also the only class I ever dropped (in high school) and, with a semester left, I needed some other “math” class to replace it.
Enter “Computers” — a brand new class my counselor pointed out — and, she assured me — the very best part of the class was the lack of any math whatsoever. I signed up on the spot.
Can you believe they gave us a math credit to sit around and play “Spelunker”? We’d have a large keyboard next to a phone, and the handset on the phone was placed over these two black suction cup thingys, and we’d dial into a mainframe somewhere, and BAM!
Spelunker!
The printer would spit out paper that told us what part of the cave we were at, and where we were going, and what kind of evil gnomes and dragons were in our path — and we’d slay them…or get slayed.
The bad news was writing programs in Basic and Pascal if we actually wanted a grade. My “programs” were as simple as my life was back then, and they amounted to multiple-choice quizzes with 4 possible answers — one of which was correct — to be presented to a classmate later. The program would tell them what questions they got right, and what ones they got wrong, and, at the end, would give them a grade printed out in the form of a report card.
For example, let’s say the dude who sat next to me was named “Joe Large”. I’d write a quiz that would ask:
1) Joe Large is
a) cool
b) smart
c) popular
d) a homo
2) Joe Large’s mother is named
a) Sue
b) Mary
c) Jane
d) Marge
and so on and so forth.
We would all laugh — even Joe Large would laugh — and then I’d write the next batch of quizzes. I’d even get a chuckle out of my teacher from time to time, and, by semester’s end, the 1/2 credit of math was all mine.
One day Teacher walked in with a box, and it was from a new company called Apple, and after he opened it and showed the Apple II off, we were all so excited we just about wet our pants. No more dial ups to the mysterious main frame! And…gasp…a monitor! You could see shit! And..gasp…two floppy drives! You could save shit and bring it home! And…gasp…memory in the form of a hard drive! 64K worth! What in the world could we do with all that space?
Write more quizzes, of course. Bigger, longer ones.
I played consumer the day after Thanksgiving and walked out of the Apple store with a big box. A new iMac! For the first time in 26 years, I’m back on a Mac. It looks so good on my desk that I kinda want to wet myself. The keyboard feels almost as good as a vagina. So, I’ve been busy dumping CD’s into iTunes, and getting used to a non-PC interface, surfing all sorts of porn sites without having to worry about Trojans and Spywear!
My iPod just synched up with my computer!!
Is it time to dump my Razor for an iPhone?!
I haven’t had this much fun since my slumber party with Barbie Cummings!
Here’s another quiz. See if you can get it right:
Billy Watson is
a) cool
b) smart
c) popular
d) a homo
