When I was a kid I would sometimes get dropped off at my dad's house.
It was normally on the weekend with the occasional weeknight thrown in the mix.
My dad is a very busy man.
He has always been so busy that he never has had time for anyone or anything, except for his work.
Source: Pixabay.com
He didn't like to work at home though. He would always go to his office and I would often be left alone in an empty house.
It was a one story house, but it was very long. It took quite a while to get from one end to the other.
The bedrooms were all the way on the west end, but if you went east you came to a small room right past the laundry area that had about 10 steps leading downward.
At the bottom of the steps was a very dark study. There was a terrible looking couch that had little white and black tank designs on it. Couches used to have that design a lot back then. I'm sure you would recognize it if you saw it.
There was also an oak desk and several expensive business chairs with the little metal buttons on the backs.
Sitting on the oak desk was a very new IBM computer. My dad's pride and joy. So he said.
He hardly used the computer because he was always at the office. However, he felt the need to have one at his house.
Being a curious kid I used to boot up the computer and look inside the file directories at every opportunity.
One day I noticed the directory that said something like
C:\files\files
What was in there? I wondered.
I assumed it was just nothing. Probably just some work stuff but I took a look anyway. I was greeted with about a thousand different games.
This was probably 1985 or 1986. My dad's computer was an IBM with a monochrome monitor and a floppy drive. The types of games that people were playing were mostly text based.
Zork and Zork 2 were my favorites.
That computer did not have those games on it.
However, it did have a whole bunch of text games that I had never heard of before. Most of them involved going into space or exploring some deep dark dungeon.
I don't think I can count how many nights I spent by myself in the dark playing on dad's old computer.
You might say "that doesn't sound very fun" but it was great deal of fun for me.
I miss those days.
I miss my dad's old computer.
