It sounds like a joke, even as I write it now, but I was completely serious. Mom, to her credit, didn't laugh- didn't even question why a 7 year old girl preferred Basic Computing over something like tennis or art or theater (which I also did, in later years). Instead, she signed me up for the course, and I spent my summer vacation learning to write BASIC on an Apple IIe. Mom rocked.

I remember being the youngest in the class, and the only girl. My classmates were mostly in their teens, and they didn't talk to me. During breaks, and sometimes when the teacher wasn't looking, I fired up Lemonade Stand, thrilled whenever I was given a weather report of hot and dry, because it meant I could jack up the prices on my virtual lemonade.

For years after that, I asked for only one thing every birthday or Christmas: my own computer. I wanted an Apple IIc, because it was cute and small and girly (and hello, Lemonade Stand!) and the year I turned 15, I got one. It was secondhand, but that meant that it also came with an ImageWriter and- be still my beating heart!- a Koala Pad.

This was me. This is me. It's why I've never been afraid of computers, why, despite knowing better, I see computers as so much more than just a "tool". I am a geek- a lovely, hip, beautiful geek.