Christmas of 1996, a ten year old boy was spending christmas day in front of his TV, connected to it was his Commodore 64. The boy was angry and sad, and ashame

Christmas of 1996, a ten year old boy was spending christmas day in front of his TV, connected to it was his Commodore 64. The boy was angry and sad, and ashamed of being angry and sad, because his parents couldn't afford to buy him a PC, he knew it was an unreasonable wish, and he knew he could not get it. He was ashamed of his sadness and anger over not being able to get a PC (it was all he'd ever wanted since he was 6 years old), and so he didn't want to participate in the christmas dinner, he just wanted to be left alone in his dark and sad room and play Kickstart 2. He knew he was a little brat for feeling so, but alas he couldn't help himself, he felt like the future was rushing past without him. After much convincing from his patient grandmother, the boy finally participated, his parents knew he had a hard time, and they told him that there was a present for him before the dinner (in our tradition, we open presents on christmas eve, after the dinner), so he thought they were taking pity on him, he said no, he didn't want any presents. They asked him softly to consider it again, and he heard something in their voices and a feeling of intense shame came over him, he saw the giant boxes, inside it, a brand new PC, gifted from a wealthy, but distant relative who "thought it might be healthy for the boys development of his interest". He cried, out of shame, and out of happiness, and he grew up so much in those moments, to feel so undeserving and yet grateful. That computer was with him the next 6 years, a 100 mhz pentium, 16 mib of RAM, 814 mib (fat32 formatted) harddisk, 4x CD rom drive. 14" color monitor, windows 95, 3 button logitech ps/2 mouse, and ESS AudioDrive sound card(soundblaster 100% compatible). On that machine, he learned so much, and when he trashed it, there was nobody to help him format it, so in time, he figured it out, by trail and error, how to format and reinstall windows and drivers. What a time to be alive. That computer was upgraded with a Voodoo card, a CD burner, an ISA network card (he dragged it to many LANs at friends houses and at the local youth club), at some point 32 mib ram was added too. That machine sits behind me right now, still fully functional. It's not an understatement to say that that experience formed me as a human being, as well as helped shape my future and career, having unlimited and unrestrained access to a computer as a kid probably saved my life in more ways than one. So that is one of my favorite christmas memories.