With Christmas only four days away, I thought this to be the perfect time to hop in a time machine and head 15 years into the past to talk about one of the best unexpected Christmas gifts I ever received.
The year was 2002 and I was in the 7th grade and my younger brother was in 3rd grade. I cannot recall what exactly either of us had on our respective Christmas lists that year but I know the last present we unwrapped was not included by myself or him.
It started when we unwrapped a scanner and neither of us had any idea what to think. I’m not sure we even knew what a scanner was or what it did and to this day I cannot recall ever using said scanner but I digress.
Attached to the now unwrapped scanner was a Polaroid(!) picture of a computer set up on a desk in what looked like our basement. We quickly rushed downstairs and lo and behold there it was, a brand new Dell desktop computer on a huge desk ready for raring to go for us.
Over the next seven or eight years that computer gave us many memories. It served me well all throughout my high school years before I moved onto laptops when I moved off to college. Compared to today’s technology, this computer was like looking at the ancient Pyramids or Stonehenge. It had the old CRT monitor and when they call it a tower PC they literally meant it came with a whole tower but at the time this was a top of line machine.
One of our favorite pastimes was playing video games on the machine whether is be disc based games or flash games on the internet. We used the PC non-stop and loved every minute of it.
A favorite game of mine was was the Backyard Sports series. This is one that will talked about often on the blog and unfortunately is no longer in production but these games were a classic.
As the years wore on that computer began to slow down as most do and eventually technology surpassed what that machine was capable of and it became a thing of that past. It remained on that desk in the basement for quite a long time but our family had moved on to other devices, mostly laptops and tablets. After years of sitting dormant we put it to rest for good and got rid of the desk as well.
Looking back that computer was one of the great Christmas surprises. Even now, after its been long gone for many years, the memory of that day and the excitement that rushed over us in the moment was the stuff of Christmas magic. It’s something I’ll hold on to forever.
Merry Christmas.
The Bat Flip 