When I was young...

I just heard someone say that we are the only generation who will remember what it was like to grow up without computers and the internet etc. Which made me think... that is so true!

I remember when I was younger we didn't have a computer! Not at home anyway. My dad had a couple in his office and over the summer holidays he would bring it home for us to play on. Mostly we played solitare, or mah jong, but we also played Lotus, the computer driving game (which to this day remains one of my favorite games ever!).

Our friends would come over and play on it too, because they didn't have a computer at home. By computer I obviously mean P.C, I didn't grow up in the 70's when Pong was a massive hit or anything! jeez, I'm not that old! :P

But yeah, I totally remember that a P.C was a novelty item. Our school had one in the year 6 classroom at primary school and we would get a turn to go on it during break, or some boring lesson... I recall always playing that ski-down-the-hill game but could never ever work out how to play it without getting eaten by the Yeti... to this day I can't figure out how you were supposed to do it. Unless that was the aim? In which case I did it very well!

I also remember when we first got the internet at home. We had AOL (I don't know why) and I set up my very first email address and told my friend that I had an email account and she also had one. Well, she, coming from a family who's father worked for something like IBM, already had email, but I remember feeling so cool for being able to tell her I had one too and we could email each other! I remember chatting to people on AOL chat and it was so much fun. I also recall that time when I told my friend I had email that I needed her address and in such a NooB way - when she told me what it was, I assumed that the @ in her email was written at @T - like the symbol alone wasn't enough - that the T had to be there because it sounded like it should be... haha. I'll always feel a little bit embarrased by that! But they were the days!

The internet all of a sudden exploded and you could Internet search anything you wanted! There was a website for the Sock Shop of all things and you could go on teenchat at school and waste an hour talking to random people for the hell of it, before you even had to worry about sicko's stalking younger children! I remember hearing people say 'internet cafe' and hope it was like a virtual world where you had a little person and you could walk around and talk to people (Hey! I invented Second life! No way!) but was dissapointed to learn it was just a term for a chatroom... no coffee involved. Boo! I also remember the first time I watched a music video on the internet! Jeniffer Lopez, If you had my Love! Yeah! Recognise! I was hip, even back then!

I wonder what other bright and shiny things will be invented in the future and we will look bck and say 'I remember when we didn't have those flying auto-mobeels, we walked around or got on those buses like regular folk, and we got by!' - whilst sitting on a porch in the outback, rocking on a chair and all of a sudden turning into some old woman from a ridiculous movie.

Ah, the future holds so many possibilities!

Picture overkill? haha!