Thanks for sharing your story. I can relate to some of your experiences, although you definitely had it tougher than me. She called the owner of the local ISP

Thanks for sharing your story. I can relate to some of your experiences, although you definitely had it tougher than me. She called the owner of the local ISP and essentially traded me for internet access; I would go to their "office" (a repurposed shipping container) to answer tech support emails, and at home we could dial in for free. This is where "unschooling" truly began. I had Microsoft Encarta that came with the PC, I had a book called Internet For Dummies, and I had virtually unlimited access to information. This was a breakthrough moment for me also. The local ISP offered shell or SLIP accounts, but SLIP was more expensive so I had a shell account. Mosaic was still buggy back then and it required the Win32s extensions to run on 16-bit Windows so I didn't bother. Gopher and FTP were the centers of my world. My book was Navigating the Internet by Richard Gibbs. Do you ever wonder if you would've ended up in the same place if you'd had an easier or more privileged upbringing? I'm convinced that most of my hardships growing up were essential factors in how I ended up. If I came up today with high speed Internet and a comfortable middle class life with a new smartphone every two years and a computer that I don't have to share with four other siblings, I might not have found the things that I'm so passionate about that I'll do anything just to pursue them.