I’m not sure where on the internet I travelled in the mid-nineties, but I know the vehicle was my first laptop.The costly box was a dark-grey hunk of plastic that was effectively a generic Dell or Gateway, but I can’t remember it’s actual “brand”. It weighed seven pounds, and despite being roughly the same length and width as the computer being used to write this, it was two inches thick. It was ostensibly for “school” but other than the occasional biology lab report, I can’t imagine what educational use it was through when the internet had to squeeze through a 33K (not big) hole on the left side of my laptop.

There was an unsatisfying absence of a “click” when I plugged in the modem card. It was the height of internet communication technology of the 1990’s, folded into a thick credit card that gave me access around the world, and had cost me a considerable chunk of my student loan money. It seated into its slot with more of a flaccid “splupsh” feeling, which would be followed by the screechy bird of analog phone connection, and then all the poorly formatted text the world had to offer. 

Technically it was portable, but my laptop memories take place at the MDF and brown metal desk, which I had moved into the trailer that Chinquapin installed in the parking lot between the 7th & 8th grade dorms. My only job there, in exchange for room and board, was to be twice the age of the students. I could sit at the desk near the door, available if the kids needed supervising, and play video games instead of studying. I fought the Battle of Gettysburg instead of counting fruit flies. I colonized Alpha Centauri, when I should have been memorizing kingdom and phylum. In retrospect, I guess I was studying Sid Meier games. I can’t honestly say the time was wasted, because I’ve used my knowledge of the Civil War exactly as many times as I have drawn a Punnett square in my medical career. 
As with all computers, toy cowboys and velveteen rabbits, the day came when I no longer loved my laptop, and it was replaced with another, “better” computer, which I can not remember at all. The best, most meaningful, longest lasting thing that that laptop gave me was the ability to play Age of Empires. I understand how vapid that sounds, but showing off a cool new videogame on my fancy laptop was the first real bonding experience I had with the new guy on campus: Jarrett Kupcinski. Watching over the shoulder while someone forages for  digital berries is not the foundation of a life-altering twenty-plus year friendship, I know. I agree. To build a friendship like ours, you have to play it’s sequel, Age of Kings, which will get it’s own post.