A Reluctant Blogger is Born

Much has changed since my elementary school days in the mid-80s (not long after I understood--albeit in a hazy, confused way--the horror of birth and the lengths to which a husband and wife must go to create a baby). My classmates and I boarded a bus and were ferried to a computer lab. There, in tidy rows and under the watchful eye of our teacher, we spent hours commanding a turtle to move about on the computer screen. It did not resemble a real turtle--of that I was certain, being a budding biologist--but when you asked the turtle to go forward 1000, could it ever move! I was awash with a strange feeling of power over that ever-obedient turtle that would move however impossible or unreasonable my expectations. However, I had, too, the disconcerting sense that the tasks demanded of us students would grow even more complicated than rt 90 and fd 10.

Flash forward to the 1990s and to Castle Master, a game that kept my brother Brent occupied for hours. Brent was indeed 'Master' of that castle. Indeed, both of my brothers easily mastered Conan, Karateka, and Joust. The only game I dominated was DigDug, but only because my brothers considered it beneath them. However, I did develop an uncanny knack for squashing the little people I was meant to rescue in Choplifter, as my friend Caroline can attest to; even now I can feel the simultaneous guilt and pleasure in hearing them squeak for the last time.

The university computer class required for my undergraduate degree proved daunting indeed. The computer program that I created in the computer lab went so wrong that the baffled computer TA awarded me a 'pass' on the assignment due to his naive belief that no one could foul up something so simple. It was only through diligent study and effort that I earned my A.

Other mishaps or near-mishaps have occurred since then. It was sheer luck that my entire Master's thesis did not disappear until after my defence; such was my faith in my computer that it did not occur to me to save it on disk. And I still remember the disgust on my brother's face when he explained to me that assigning random names to files would make locating an individual file a gruelling endeavour.

But today will be different. Today, I will become a blogger. Today, I will arrive--without any ugly mishap that might forever prove me computer illiterate. Share with me now, computer saavy friends, this momentous occasion. A blogger is born . . .