We moved to the US from a post-soviet country when I was around 12 and one night a few weeks or months later my dad came home with a Dell PC. It _may_ have been

We moved to the US from a post-soviet country when I was around 12 and one night a few weeks or months later my dad came home with a Dell PC. It _may_ have been a Dell Dimension 4100, but I can't remember for sure. Pretty sure it was running Windows 98. I can't remember the exact timeline, but in my memory I felt like we spent all evening setting it up. And finally, I heard the dial-up sound and saw the AOL logo. I can't remember what website I looked at first when I was finally alone and able to explore the PC by myself: I think I may have clicked to go to the AOL chat rooms, then typed random stuff into the search engine (I remember my best friend at the time had this idea that if you tYpE SeArCh PhRaSeS iN lIkE tHiS you would get different/better results). I may have also created my first email address that night. I spent a lot of time in AOL and later MSN chat rooms, just arguing on the Internet or hanging out in the "speed fighting" rooms. It's how I learned to type quickly. I also discovered Geocities and started making my own websites right away, inventing role playing worlds and creating manually-managed games that nobody ever played (but which were very fun to invent and build websites for).