Early Computer Use

My mother had got her personal computer in September, 1987 when she was seven months pregnant with my sister. I have no idea what she used it for at the time, I was two. But when I came of age at around four or five, i played some select video games on it. Frogger and Space invaders mostly. The screen was black with yellow graphics. The hardware was originally white, but it faded yellow with age. We had it until 1995.
It was weird that we had a PC ahead of the curve, but failed to update until after the curve. I had a year-long project in fourth grade. It was about the State of North Carolina. For each aspect of the state, we had to write a paragraph to a page. We needed a write up on how the state motto came about. "The General Assembly of North Carolina adapted the motto......." blah blah blah. I'm twenty-three now, and details from when I was ten are sparse. I do remember though we needed illustrations on each of these pages. We had a word processing program on that old machine that did come with clip art. I remember when I wrote my page for the State Tree, the dogwood, that I used a piece of clip-art of either a pussy-willow or a little bit of cotton. After crudely inserting this into my paper, I highlighted it pink in hopes that it would pass as high-tech and get me a good grade. It did not. Little did I know, there were those in the class that printed their project, not on a dot-matrix printer, but on one of those newfangled laser printers that their families had probably purchased specifically for the project. I put a lot of effort into that project and I was okay with my b-minus.
An interesting side note to the story above, when my sister two years my junior had the same project from the very same teacher two years later, we had our new computer and she excelled with a similar effort but a better grade. I could've been mad, but I wasn't. Good for her I thought.
With our new family computer in 1995 came a service called America On-Line, lovingly called AOL. At first, I only had restricted access and the only good sites I wanted to go to were the ones for my favorite television network, "Nikelodeon." The site has come a long way over the years. After a few years of tinkering around that site for thirty minutes a day or so, I asked my mother for more access, access that was granted for age fifteen and up. I was a thirteen-year-old with the access deemed appropriate by AOL for fifteen-year-olds. OH YES!
With the new access I could Instant Message and contribute to chat rooms. The one I remember frequenting the most was the chat room for Raleigh-Durham age 25-30. I know what you're thinking and no, I never gave my proper age and location to strangers. I had no intent on meeting those weird old people. I did enjoy reading about the nightlife of nerds in my local area. They all new me as SAW4685432, a thirty-something computer programmer from the Research Triangle Park. They thought that was my phone number, it was not. There was never anything x-rated. The most daring thing I ever saw was people describing what pajamas they wore as they watched the popular television sitcoms Seinfeld or Wings. Man, they loved Wings. Every time I entered the room, I would receive a "cyber-hug" from my friend feisty2love. She would type ((((SAW)))) and I would type (((feisty))) right back. I found it endearing. Years later, when I actually turned 15 and was too old for such things, I emailed feisty2love. I told her the truth. How old I was and how I really was just observing them, responsibly of course.