GOTO 10

Smith Elementary still looked huge to me. The distance between my hall, where the first grade and kindergarten class was, to the hall in the far side seemed a long long way. I didn't concern myself with anything outside of my hall, too much. My world was small.

That all was about to change. My first grade year my teacher, Mrs. sunstrom, owned a computer store, one of the first in the area. As I understood it, as a result my school and specifically my class, got an Apple ii compouter. It also meant my library got an influx of some new and unusual books.

From the first day, I loved the computer. It was a little bit of a mystery, you typed these storage commands in to make it do things. This was a couple years before every class has a computer and a copy of Carmen Sandiago. In those days, in the hall, where the computer was, the black a green screen just hinted at what it could do. I can't tell you how many times my family died of cholera in The Oregon trail, but it didn't matter. This box could take my somewhere. It was an endless book that moved.

I imagined the stories I could tell. You didn't have to just find food, you could find treasure and fight dragons. I had played Zork at my Aunt Cy's house, after all, so I knew the potential.

For those younger readers, the Zork I'm talking about has no pictures, it was completely text based and I'm pretty sure always ended with, "You have been eaten by a grue!". It was fantastic.

These thoughts consumed by young brain, like a grue (sorry).

Library day comes, and I'm checking iut this new section in computers. It is a small section and mostly pretty boring. I only remember one book. It was titled simply BASIC. Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It was the way, or so I believed, The Oregon Trail and Zork were created. Sure, I knew we weren't going to get Zork at the school, but what if I wrote one. I would be so cool. I checked the book out.

I didn't understand a lot of it, but I could understand how everything needed a line number, a command and smething you wanted to do with the command. I took a notebook and started writing how I would do various things. I needed time with the computer.

I talked to my teacher about the book and she even said I could get extra credit for writing a program. I am not sure what extra credit means in elementary school, nor do I remeber the logistics of how this was going to work out. I remember she said I could do it. I can't imagine Sienna, my first grader, posing such a thing, but I can Umagine letting her try.

I told my parents I was doing this as extra credit for class, I would stay after for a little while, write a program, then ride my bike home. We rode too and from school everyday, so this wasn't that unusual.

They must have said yes, because I remeber the oddness of being in a nearly empty school, slowly typing on this computer.

10 PRINT "HELLO"

RUN

HELLO

It worked. Then I pulled out my notebook. I typed what I had written, it didn't work. I fixed a typo, it didn't work. I wrote an rewrote codes from my book and every one of them failed. I remeber the heat on my face as I couldn't do this. What was I doing wrong? How come my codes didn't work?

My teacher didn't know how to help me. I don't even think she tried. So, underneath the chalk drawing of Pipes all fitted together, I wrote a very simple code from the book. I checked it. Iit worked. It wasn't mine. I showed my teacher, but I didn't care what she thought. I felt like a failure. There was nothing cool about what I made.

By the time I got to my bikes, I had resolved that I would need to recheck out the BASIC book on our next library day.