Auntie knows everything
Wavy lines back to 1981. I'm sitting in the lounge, pounding away on the keyboard of a ZX-81 which is connected to the family TV set. Yes, I was one of those famed 14-year-old computer fanatics of that distant, halcyon era.

My aunt, in her 60s, is watching from the armchair as she does her knitting. She's visiting, and probably hasn't ever seen a computer before. Apparently she's been trying to work out what I'm doing, because she suddenly asks, "So, can you ask it anything, then?"

Oh how I rolled around on the floor, laughing at her naivete! What a dinosaur, I thought, what a muppet. How could anyone be so stupid to think that you could simply sit at your computer at home, and ask questions to get information.

About 15 years later it dawned on me that she was, in fact, startlingly prescient, and if I'd taken her seriously I could have been Bill Gates.

Bugger.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 23 Mar 2012, 10:49, Reply)