I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of a big screen. Mom’s computer is open, and it’s making that whirring noise. I’ve got five floppy disks lined up like soldiers ready for action. I swap them in one by one, pressing “Insert” and typing commands when prompted. The monitor flickers, and suddenly there are these strange green letters and symbols, forming a title screen that looks nothing like any game before.

I don’t know what MS-DOS is, but it feels like magic. Typing those letters makes things appear on the screen. It’s like a puzzle, and I’m solving it. When the game finally loads, there are these funny little monsters running around. But what really clicks is that this computer, with all its parts, can do anything you tell it to do. I start asking questions about how it works, typing “dir” just because it sounds like a command.

I type “bbs” and connect to a place where other kids are talking about games and computers. For the first time, I feel like there’s more out there for me than what’s at home. The screen lights up with messages from strangers, opening a whole new world that feels just as exciting as the monsters in my game.