English Audio Request

I’ll admit it, I was spoiled. In my armoire, I had a Texas Instruments computer that I used to play games like Parsec and Alpiner. The facts that the main console didn’t have a mouse, was sold separately from the monitors, and were unable to connect to the Internet or other computers didn’t mean a thing to me. Today, I get hot and bothered over the lack of a video camera and Flash on the iPad. I was perfectly happy in this idyllic dream world of side-shooting and slaloming , until my Dad decided to purchase a real computer, a then top-of-the-line 100 Mhz NEC.
At the time, I thought all I could accomplish with the technology was play software games. Until I discovered I could listen to music; I was amazed it would let me play the same song as many times as I’d like. Clearly, I knew nothing about the Internet, or how it was used. Even after we moved into a townhouse in sweltering Longwood, Florida and I had hours alone to kill, I was still fixed on those damned software games. In my defense, these amusements had becoming increasingly more appealing since my upgrade from the floppy-driven Texas Instruments. [N.B. – Don’t play Doom right before bedtime.]
I did not become acquainted with the temptations and trifles of the Internet until 1999 when we moved into our current house in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Old enough, I could recognize my parents had been alpha-nerds: my Mom had traipsed the country teaching healthcare professionals how to use CT (then, CAT) scanners. My father toiled traveling the world, innovating solutions for healthcare information technology and knowledge management. Yet, I still considered myself smarter than they were when it came to using the computer. Why?