Albert Poo Holes

Don’t ask me why, but this morning on my run I started thinking about my family’s IBM Tandy 2000 computer. This was the computer you bought in 1987 if you didn’t want to buy an Apple IIe and get dysentery playing The Oregon Trail…rather, get dysentery in the game The Oregon Trail (I don’t know anyone who has gotten dysentery just by playing the game, but I suppose anything is possible). Anyway, apparently even in the 80’s we weren’t Mac people, so the Tandy 2000 it was.

And now, every summer when I go out to Otis, my parents beg and plead with me to let them throw this monstrosity of a computer away. And every time they ask, they are met with the same response: “What are you, crazy? You can’t get rid of that computer! It was bad enough when you sold our house in Kingston! Now you want to get rid of one of the last relics of the house I spent my childhood in?! Shya right! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be outside watering the roses with my SuperSoaker.”

But really, what are my reasons for keeping anything in that house? There are none! There is no excuse for a 26-year-old woman to harbor 4 Cabbage Patch Kids, a toddler-sized stuffed Elmo, Andrew Keegan, Celebrities’ Brains On Drugs, and New Kids on the Block posters, a Mickey Mouse comforter, a Glo-worm, and 37 troll dolls. I am at that house for a total of about 25 days a year and I can’t remember the last time I played with the Bar Mitzvah troll. So what’s stopping me from getting a huge trash bag and finally cleansing myself of All Things 80’s?

But back to the computer. This morning I wondered what the reason was exactly as to why I prohibited my parents from trashing it. Sure, there are a lot of fun memories attached to it – there’s that one contestant on Family Feud who gives the middle finger when he answers a question wrong, a very robotic-looking Vanna White who claps with her arms perpendicular to the ground and straight as a board, the ever-elusive Carmen Sandiego who somehow always manages to hide the Statue of Liberty in Lisbon or Reykjavík, and of course, all the outrageous team names my dad used to come up with like Bungeeshmungees and Billybonkers.

If I went back and played these games today, none of them would be very fun. After all, when it comes down to it, I’d just be playing a crappy 80’s computer game from a floppy disk. (My dad actually asked me why I couldn’t just transfer the games to my current computer and I had to remind him that the games were stored on a flimsy disk the size of a cd case that has been obsolete since before our deaf dog Annie decided to take a stroll across our very trafficky street.)

And so maybe it IS time. Maybe that first weekend I go back to Otis this July will be the start of a new era for me, one without my treasured, outdated computer. Oh I know I will still shed a tear for every game of Gertrude’s Puzzles I played, for every dot matrix banner/card/sign I made using Print Shop, and for every game of Card Sharks I lost because at the age of 8 I didn’t know how many women out of 100 said they would never cheat on their husbands. But it will be okay. Because I will always have the memories of playing those games. And I suppose that’s all that matters. Well, that and the high scores, but since I could never do better than team Bungeeshmungees, I suppose that’s okay too.

Plus, now maybe there will be extra room for yet even more beds in that house. Because 8 isn’t enough. Seriously. I’m not lying. 8 beds. 1 house. For just my mom and dad. Talk about pack rats.