My Family's First Computer

My family's first computer was a black and white abacus. It had a total of six beads on two wires.

The wires were a little rusty, so sometimes the beads would get stuck. Whenever that happened to someone else in the family, they would call me over to fix the computer.

I used to read magazine articles about color abaci - and I had my eyes on one that had 15 beads and three wires. I begged my parents to buy one, but they said they couldn't afford it.

Finally, my family ended up buying a color abacus. My dad sold his beloved fishing pole so we could buy that abacus. The day the color abacus arrived, I could scarcely barely believe my cliches. I stayed up all night sliding the beads left and right. I could not believe the wires were not rusty. That was a totally new experience for me.

I ran my fingers over the smooth, brightly colored beads. Red! Blue! Yellow! I had only seen such vivid technology in the pages of Abacus Enthusiast Monthly. I felt like a scientist at the cutting edge of computational advancement.


My younger brother, jealous of my expertise, tried to slide the beads when he thought I wasn't looking. "You're not certified for that," I told him sternly, flipping through an imaginary user manual. "These are high-speed computational devices. One wrong move, and you could crash the whole system."


That night, I challenged myself to perform the most complex calculations I could think of. How many marbles I had lost in the past year? How many times I had been sent to bed without dessert? I tried to count how many times I could no longer count on some of my friends. Those were the days.


After a while, my parents grounded me.  I asked them why, and they told me they had no idea, but that I was grounded. I sulked, went to my room,

and sought to find fresh new teenager cliches.





--
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
https://pairsmathgame.com
https://philshapirochatgptexplorations.blogspot.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/philshapiro.bsky.social

He/Him/His

"Wisdom begins with wonder." - Socrates
"Learning happens thru gentleness."
"We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options."  David Suzuki

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