Thanks to Ars Technica I saw today was the 35th birthday of the Commodore 64. It was a piece of off-beige plastic with a cartridge slot and accessory port that changed the trajectory of my family.
Each week I’d save money and watch as the price in the Sunday ads crept down. Once the cost and savings curves crossed we made the trip to Kmart. Before they got it down for us my parents told me they would buy it for the family instead of me buying it for us. I want to say it was at the counter, but that is probably just nostalgia talking. I was too naive to understand their finances or the weight of that economic decision on them. That never fully registered until I wrote this while watching my daughter playing in the next room on a happy Saturday morning.
The owner’s manual opened-up new worlds. My sister was the first one that had the drive to type out the balloon program that we couldn’t even save yet in Commodore basic. The C64 sprite program. She took words from a page and made the lump of plastic and keys do something. You could change the color and do other things on it. That was the first time I was exposed to programming.
Dad later added the monitor, printer, and floppy drive later so we didn’t have to hook it up to our only TV. The Write Stuff word processor cartridge gave me the ability to truly write and edit thoughts for the first time. You could also adjust line height on the dot matrix printer to make sure you hit 5 pages on the report that your teacher asked for.
I learned the value of backup as a teenager when a spark from my finger to the keyboard wiped out an unsaved 6 page report which was due that morning. I learned compassion from my mom who typed the 4 pages in from an early draft while I took a shower and ate breakfast to recover.
It wasn’t just me. My entire family grew with that brick of plastic. It was the first door that opened other possibilities for all of us. I don’t know where any of us would be without it.
