My First Computer

Write about your first computer.

Way back in the late 80’s my family somehow attained an Apple 2gs computer. It was blocky and all I can remember doing on it was playing some sort of bug/ alien game. I’m not sure what happened to it and I don’t remember having a computer at home after that.

I took a word processor to college with me to write papers on. It had the perforated paper that fed through the back and the hole punched strips on the sides that had to be carefully torn off so the assignment didn’t get ripped in the process. My grandpa heard about my word processor at the family reunion and decided he had to have this amazing technology as well. I remember him calling me to help him set it up.

That year I also started working on the computers in the computer lab at school. You could save your assignment on the desktop but you had to print them because as soon as the computer was restarted the assignments were gone. I could also save an assignment on a floppy disk. I’m pretty sure we still have some of those floating around in the attic. This is where we learned to save early and often because a glitch 5 pages into an assignment was sure to cause headaches and tears.

During my Master’s program I did an assistantship that required a laptop. The school checked one out to me and my husband and I cracked up because it looked like a toy. We dubbed it “My First Laptop” like we had picked it up at ToyRUs.

These days I most often use the tiny computer in my pocket!