Writing about Grandpa is hard because there are so many good things to talk about. I picture everyone my family staring at a blank computer screen, pounding their fists into the air because they can’t decide if they should write about how Grandpa’s homegrown Sweet Corn tasted similar to total bliss, that his nose was always behind a camera, or how seemingly unnatural it was for Grandpa to know more about computers than some college students in their twenties.

That last computer part was considerably important to me, because I consider Grandpa to be the sole reason I ever became interested, arguably obsessed, with computers. It’s hard to say whether or not that statement would be considered a compliment; to be responsible for yet one more member of the Geek Squad. But I figure it’s better than holding someone responsible for my good looks or athletic ability.

When Grandpa upgraded to a new Packard Bell system, equipped with Windows 95, multi-tasking, and a free Wheezer music video, he gave my family his old system and introduced me to the world of point-and-click solitaire, the command line and Windows 3.11. This system was rad: It had about four gigabytes of hard drive space, a plate-sized floppy drive and a fourteen kilobyte per second fax/modem that, at the time, seemed capable of hacking into the United States Military Defense System.

I think back on these moments and I still feel an incredible amount of joy from that time in my life. Before Grandpa’s computer, I could only stare at shiny screen savers in the electronics department at RC Willey and hope that some day, I could stare at one of those monitors from my own bedroom and perhaps create a masterpiece of digital art using Microsoft Paint. With Grandpa’s computer, all of that became a reality and once I discovered America Online and keywords I thought were the World Wide Web, my virtual-reality seemed limitless.

After the computer, visiting Grandpa became like visiting the future. I remember daydreaming about things like Windows 98 and the many programs Grandpa was using to edit photos and create entire landscaped maps of the sprinkling system at the local golf course. All of this was amazing to me and visiting with Grandpa and his computer became somewhat like starring in a Mission Impossible movie with Tom Cruise; everything seemed high tech and impossibly possible.

Later on our roles would eventually change, and Grandpa would begin to ask me questions about the computer. I would normally never let anyone in on this, but most of the questions he asked I didn’t know the answers to; this isn’t all that surprising considering how often I confuse the north with the south. But we’d sit down together anyway, troubleshooting through hoops of trial and error; which is not at all unlike putting together pieces of a puzzle. Some of the very basic computer commands and functions I learned in those moments, and luckily, I never inadvertently re-formatted his hard-drive or took it apart to see whether or not it would still power on afterwards.

It’s strange to think about this now because computers have become such an enormous part of my life. I feel so proud that Grandpa played such a large role in this part of my life, even though before now I don’t think I ever considered how large of an impact he actually had. I shudder to think what my life would be like had I not been introduced to disk operating systems or phrases from the green pixilated version of Wheel of Fortune. There’s a thin line between my life with computers and homelessness.

Even now, as I’m typing this, I feel a very personal connection with this computer and the things I learned at Grandpa’s. It’s not just the drag-and-drop, photo editing, or word-processing, but the very experience of learning new things with such a great man. Education has been such a chore to me, perhaps because it is so much a singular activity, but computer technology has continued to dominate my attention. I like to think that those moments with Grandpa are partly, if not wholly, the reason for that interest and slight obsession with graphical user interfaces.

To list everything that Grandpa has done to inspire me, from his gardening skills to the delicate and precious way he treated his wife would be an impossible monumental task. I fear the extinction of forests if those things were ever put to paper, so I’ll simply leave it at this, with just one word that often isn’t said enough.

Thanks Grandpa.

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