Quotabie Babies
If you don't know what on earth I'm talking about, well, you're not Nathan.
When we were kids, personal computers were born [when Rae was a kid, programmed disks were already for sale, and by the time Mendon hit the streets floppy disks were already passe]. Nathan, much to his good fortune, as witnessed by his current line of work, was fascinated by them. He built our first computer from a kit from Radio Shack, and then, of course, there was the Commodore. He would get programming magazines, hand them over to me, I would read them to him - line by tedious line - and together we would create some all-text game to play (i.e. Zork). I would be outright lying if I said I did not enjoy this process as much as he did. Maybe our roles then explain our jobs today - I dealt with the words on the page, he dealt with transforming them on the computer.
I was 8-years-old when we did this. I know, because I remember misspelling "go to" in an assignment in Mr. Harris' 3rd grade class and thinking, "but 'GOTO' is one word!!!" At eight, I was still learning complex words like brackets, parentheses and quotation marks. So I made up "quotabie babies" (pronounced "ca-tay-bie bay-bies"). For some inexplicable reason, I remembered this when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom last night.
Nae, would there have been a reason I would have said "quotabie babies red" - or green - or any other color for that matter? Or was that just middle of the night muddling - perhaps with "slug-a-bug red" or some such memory?
And yes, this fretful question is partially responsible for my over-tiredness today.
Comments
Hey, Mara!
Quotabie babies left and quotabie babies right, you used to say! I remember we spent MONTHS typing in this computer game that let you wander around the screen and pick up oxygen tanks and gems. You had to get more oxygen before it ran out, and there were these things that got you if you bumped into them and you had to collect gems. There would be more and more of these alien things as you got more and more gems until death was inevitable.
Then we used paper route money to buy two games, one of which was that spelling game with the barber, Sam something, where you had to make as many words as possible from one big eight letter word. It's exactly the same game play as TextTwist, available free from the MSN Zone at zone.com. This was a good game. And then there was this other game, with knights and it was a kind of medeival fair, with jousting competitions and other stuff. The game would let you name your character, and you typed Lady Finger. We didn't even know why that was funny, but it was, and we laughed like only small children can.
And, to be fair, I didn't build our first computer out of a kit from Radio Shack; I just made a crystal radio set. Once, I strung some logic gates together to make an electronic version of that little foldable paper finger thing that girls used to use to determine who you were supposed to marry, but I just copied the design from someone who knew what they were doing.
Our first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 2000, and Mommy and Daddy bought it. It had 4k of memory.
Then we got an Apple II+ from Gerry Sleigh. It cost Mommy $400 and I mowed his lawn a few times.
We were a good team, except I was too bossy sometimes. I'm sorry.
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | February 22, 2006 5:47 PM
Oh my gosh! I LOVED those games! Chivalry was the name of the medieval one, I think. I loved that so much you made me my own copy. And remember that one that was all about drawing?
Posted by: Mara | February 22, 2006 5:57 PM
Whoa! When you guys were about 8 and 11 Maman spent $400 on the two of you? Call me skeptical, but has the cost of money gone down significantly since then? When I was between 8 and 11 I couldn't get Maman to spend ten cents on me for LaffyTaffy! Arguably, I started getting a hefty $10 weekly allowance, somewhere around 8-9th grade, but that was twelve years later.
You guys must have had a different mother!
Posted by: Mendon | February 23, 2006 3:27 AM
Mensch, it all happened - just not at the same time. I don't know how much it cost, and I thought Nae paid for it with his newspaper route money, but Maman may have helped. Or Nae had to pay her back.
Posted by: Mara | February 23, 2006 8:42 AM
I thought the price was more like $50, but I don't really remember. and I think Nae and I split it? And Laffy Taffy will rot your teeth. And is gone in 20 minutes. And really, the first computer I was aware of in the house was the TR-80 from Radio Shack from a kit.
Posted by: Ma | February 23, 2006 4:46 PM
Mendon, between the ages of 8 and 11 you had a paper route. We all did. She didn't spend money on candy because you did plenty of that yourself.
Posted by: Mara | February 23, 2006 5:19 PM
Mendon nad I were older when we had our paper routes. However to be fair I recall using our apple as well. I played sticky bear math and reading games that I loved. It all balances out in the end- didn't you get the wicked cool new bed made for you?
Posted by: Rae | February 24, 2006 4:23 AM
True! Yeah, I remember Sticky Bears - it was the first ever program that we BOUGHT. And it was for a 3 year old - hahahaha :-) I loved playing it - just because it was bought.
You had your paper routes in junior high? Oh, right, they changed the times the papers had to be delivered, is that right?
Posted by: Mara | February 24, 2006 8:34 AM
I have no idea. But I delivered them in the morning during seventh or eighth grade. I remember Ma started coming with me after the crazy dogs at the end of the route scared me so bad that I called the Willoughby poice and Daddy got in the rabbit with me to find them. We brought the big white kitchen knife with us. I think she lost ten pounds walking with me. THat was fun. Mensch came every once in a while too.
Posted by: Rae | February 25, 2006 4:59 PM