My first computer — the first one I have clear memories of, anyway — was an off-white boxy monitor running Windows 98 on a dial-up connection. The dial-up didn’t last long, though. My whole family had to use the internet connection, and in those days my mom was still on top of her computer science degree, so we upgraded to broadband before anyone else in the neighborhood. The sounds of dialing into the internet are but a faint memory for me. A loud sound designed to startle my jumpy five-year-old ass out of the computer room and into the comforting paws of our deaf dog.
Once we switched from dial-up, the home computer was an unsupervised playground. By the ripe old age of ten I was creating masterpieces in MS Paint and posting them on Deviantart, gaslighting child predators on Neopets, and participating in no less than seven RPs at a time on different Warrior Cats forums. I listed my age as 13, I thought I was so mature. More than once, I downloaded a virus to the home computer and blamed it on my little brother.
He works in cyber security now.
As time went on, my mom had to swap computers to keep up with the demands of her job. We got her leftovers — hand-me-down desktops, then laptops. By the time we were all in high school, we had our own laptops for homework. Sometimes I miss the big dingy box, the mechanical keyboard too big for my little hands, the absolute lawlessness of the internet as it was in the early 2000’s. If nothing else, the static buzz of the screen felt real.
from the pen of icarus blake 
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