An Eric Episode

If you've ever wondered when or how my computer love originated, you need look no further than my brother Eric.

Eric has always been into mechanics and electronics, always loved taking things apart to find out how they worked. So it was only natural that he had an interest in computers and decided to make his living in that field.

When I was very young, Eric gave me a computer he'd built. All I remember about it is that it had this hose/tube thing that reminded me of a vacuum hose, with that accordion pleating. It was huge, and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I don't remember playing on that one much, but I'm sure I did.

But it was the portable Commodore 64 that Eric gave me in my preteens that really got me hooked. I loved that machine like it was my soulmate.

Summer Olympics (which Andrew and I played for hours, and is deserving of a blog post all to itself), Blue Max, Beach Head 1 and 2, I could list the amazing C64 games for hours. My favorite was the Alice in Wonderland game. It served as the precursor to my obsession with adventure games like the King's Quest/Police Quest/Space Quest Sierra series. When I would play Alice in Wonderland I would get swept into that world, and I never wanted to leave. It's true that you never forget your first love...I still get a little misty eyed when I see a DOS prompt.

When I went to stay with Eric and Sue for a summer a few years later, that's when I first played a King's Quest game. I don't know if Eric already owned it or if he bought it for me, but I fell head over heels in love. Eric was a huge fan of Whoppers then, and he always had a paper milk container full of them near the computer. So for that whole visit I ate Whoppers and played King's Quest. That was also when I learned that the game manual had a phone number in it for the "Hint Line". (What I didn't learn was that numbers starting with 1-900 weren't free...)

I remember that when I'd have a problem on the computer, and Eric would come in and sit down to fix it, I would just watch in complete awe of his power over the machine. I wanted nothing more than to be able to manipulate the computer the way he did.

Looking back, I guess at that time it was pretty unusual for a 12 year old to have a personal computer. But it was (and still is) pretty unusual for a girl to have a brother like Eric Lewis, so you gotta throw "usual" out the window.