Technology and Me

As a kid I was fascinated by anything that could talk or light up or do any amount of fancy tricks. Unlike many of my peers, I found Barbie dolls to be boring, which ultimately resulted in the ones given to me by clueless relatives to end up with bald heads, where I hacked their hair off, and a few missing limbs, because like most children I was a hyperactive idiot. I liked dolls alright, but only if I could interact with them. I had one toy, I cannot recall the name, that was a doll hooked to a microphone and anything you said into it the doll would repeat back in a doll voice complete with moving lips. Creepy, I know, but also extremely annoying to my family and anyone around me because anything I said was said through the talking doll, my constant companion.
After my talking doll mysteriously disappeared, I graduated to more sophisticated toys such as a Nintendo. I spent many hours with my sisters staring at a screen where we discovered exciting shortcuts in the Mario games or tested the information we knew in our Jeopardy game. I got beat up quite a few times because while someone else was playing Jeopardy, I took it upon myself to yell out the answers resulting in angry sisters. For me, these games were like a whole new world where I controlled what happened to the characters involved. Late at night I would lie in bed and imagine different strategies to aid Mario along in rescuing the Princess from the evil lizard-type monster thing.
After a series of Nintendos, Super Nintendos, Super-Duper Nintendos and so on, I finally gained access to the internet while a freshman in high school and a whole new perplexity with a technological toy. I remember it well, a Hewlett Packard just waiting to unlock the mysteries of the world, yet I spent my time researching boy bands and joke websites. I soon discovered e-mail and instant messenger and suddenly the telephone and our family’s expensive collection of encyclopedias were of no use to me.
The computer and internet have stuck by me throughout the years. It has been a faithful research tool and something to occupy me and hold my hand through spells of boredom. It’s my way of keeping in touch with old friends, or people I do not want to waste the payment of long distance on. Is there life beyond the internet? I think not.