All Now Mysterious...

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

I Remember...

There is a thread on the Hero Games Discussion Boards called "When I Was a Kid...." Here's my entry:

- I remember waiting in a long line with my friends to see a movie called "Star Wars". I hadn't heard much about it, except from one classmate who had already seen it. She said it was "pretty good, except for the murder." When I saw it, I was amazed. It was a life-changing experience.

- I remember watching Star Trek reruns on channel 2 after the nightly news was finished--if my parents let me stay up at late.

- I remember that we had seven channels to watch on TV: 2, 4, 5 (out of Cheyenne, so it was a little fuzzy sometimes), 6 (PBS), 7, 9, and 12 (also PBS).

- I remember Tom Baker as The Doctor. I also remember Peter Davison as The Doctor, though I remember him more from "All Creatures Great and Small".

- As a cure for boredom, I remember that my Mom had me read a book called "How to Eat Fried Worms". It's the first book I remember reading and really enjoying. I've enjoyed reading ever since.

- I remember being mad that President Carter cancelled our country's participation in the Olympics in 1980.

- I remember nuclear disaster drills in school. (I grew up less than 10 miles from a nuclear power plant.)

- I remember being in Spanish class in high school one morning when one of my classmates walked in late and told us (rather nonchalantly, I thought, although I didn't know what 'nonchalant' meant at the time) that the Space Shuttle had blown up. I also remember going to a scholarship awards dinner that same night at Colorado School of Mines.

- I remember having an AM radio from Radio Shack that included a handlebar mount so that I could listen to it on my bike.

- I remember being in elementary school the first year that the Broncos made the playoffs. It was a big, big deal.

- I remember being in the south stands at the old Mile High Stadium with my Dad the first time the Broncos ever beat the Dallas Cowboys.

- I remember, the summer after I turned 16, driving with a few of my friends to Wyoming to buy 'illegal' fireworks. We were terrified that we were going to get caught or that someone we knew would see us and turn us over to the police. I also remember that when we went into the store, the very first person we saw was Mr. Palmer--my high school chemistry teacher.

- I remember learning to write computer programs on a TI 99/4A. We had several of them at school (middle school), and my parents even bought one for us to use at home. It had an adapter switch so that we could use our (one) TV as a monitor. If I wanted to save a program, I saved it using a cassette recorder.

- I remember having to re-learn programming in high school because the high school didn't have TI 99/4As. It had Apple IIes.

- I remember learning how to drive on a 1/2-ton International Harvester pickup truck. It did not have power steering, power brakes, or air conditioning. It did have a manual transmission (a 'stick') with a really stiff clutch. It also had an AM radio that got about four stations.

- I remember driving a 1971 Jeep Wagoneer in high school. It was a great car, but it got terrible gas mileage. I remember using pliers to change the hubs on the front wheels from two wheel drive to four wheel drive. I remember only ever needing help once getting the Jeep unstuck (when I high centered it on a snowdrift). Otherwise, you could just shift it into 4WD Low and you were good. Perhaps most amusingly, I remember a stripe of faux wooden paneling down the side. When it got faded, my mom went out with a can of wood stain and made it look like wood again.

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