[M4A] Story Time: My 00s

Transcript

I remember back when I was a kid, I had this Compaq computer, spelled C-O-M-P-A-Q. The screen was like a small box TV, it was white, as was the keyboard and the speakers. It took a minute to turn the screen on, I'd press the button, see the red indicator lights turn on first, hear some internal workings that I imagined as being the computer thinking.

The screen is what we look at, so it wasn't a logical leap to think of it as the computer's head. I had to separately turn on the computer as well, because our alternative to sleep mode back then was some logo bouncing around the screen, Windows 95, it was mesmerizing, I'd sometimes wait for it to perfectly hit the corner, I'd figure out some pattern, some system in my head for when that happened. One day, I asked my mom to drive me down to the local library, so I could browse the latest games that they had to offer.

I'm sure these were older games when I think about it, second hand donations, returned goods, unsellable because they were only mediocre, probably. That day, I found a chess game for my computer. I didn't know if my computer could run it, I didn't really care.

Most computers could run most things, as long as they didn't have high-end graphics on them, which, to be honest, most things didn't. The cover looked amazing to me, I don't remember what it looks exactly like now, but there were pastel pink and blue silver, and a magnificent chessboard, boasting some clever computer logic I'm sure, and amazing graphics. I didn't know what any of that meant, but it was cool.

I rented it for a week, then returned it on time, and then the next day I'd go back to check if I could rent it again for another week. It took a while to install it, and I imagined the installation wizard as some person who manually did the installation process for me. Why else would they call him a wizard? Someone already told me that Bill Gates was spying on all of our computers, so I accepted the fact that people could control my computer from afar.

At that point, I didn't have internet. The game was so simple, there was probably some menu to enter your difficulty settings, maybe even to load a previous game, I don't know. Entering a new game felt so amazing to me.

There I was, camera looking down towards this chessboard of alternating black and white marble textures shining from some imaginary light source above. The chess pieces were shiny as well, each of them seemed so grabbable. Of course I couldn't grab onto the screen with my hand, but moving them around, even if they didn't animate, it just felt like so much fun to do.

I'd move them around just for the satisfying sound effect, and to see how the light changed on them. These weren't pre-rendered images, not that I could even appreciate that concept, but I felt that I'm sure I lost many matches from just curiously moving the pieces around the board. The table was also marble, but some deep green color.

It all seemed so technological at the time, as if technology had finally caught up to art and produced this experience for little me. I didn't win many matches during the short on and off weeks that I played this game, and sometimes I found other games to rent, so I had to uninstall to make space on my several megabytes of storage on the computer. In between the ripped music, my tens of saved background images, and maybe other games, I had to make storage compromises anytime I wanted a new piece of software.

I used the Nero software to burn CD mixes that I had ripped off from my store-bought CDs. I'd give each mix a cool title and write directly onto the disc itself using a specialized CD-safe marker. We even had a pack to wrap around our car's sun visor.

Even if we were only making a five minute trip, we'd spend some time picking out the music to play, and for my birthday, I finally got a Walkman. I'd put in two batteries and hope they weren't already half-used from my Game Boy Color. I'd walk around the neighborhood, balancing the Walkman in my hand like a waiter at a restaurant, making sure the spinning disc wouldn't get scratched.

Every walk felt special like that, because it was cool. I'd show my Walkman to my friends, and they'd go for a little test walk around the playground. I'd just wait there, like a store clerk waiting for a customer to try out a pair of shoes.

They'd come back with a slight smile of excitement on their face, and I'd understand that as satisfaction. We didn't verbalize our feedback like I do now. Sometimes I feel like I understood people better when I was younger.