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Super Nintendo
My parents got a Super Nintendo for my brothers and I to use. We were going to get it for Christmas that year, but my parents gave it to us in September because my mother had to go on bed rest while pregnant with my sister. It turns out a new Nintendo is an effective parenting method for four boys 10 and under when you can't be move very much. I do have some really fond memories of playing Dr. Mario and Tetris with my mom. -
First Computer
My family's first computer was an IBM that ran 5 inch floppy disks. As a kid, all we wanted was to play games. I remember having a couple of cases of floppy disks that you would flip through to find the game you wanted, and as a kid I had to learn the command to run the disk program. It was hooked up to an old dot-matrix printer that took forever to print anything, and we would use the paper to make banners as it was all connected tractor paper. -
Computer Cards
These cards were everywhere in my house. My father was a computer programmer for IBM for 45 years. When he started, he would use these cards to write his program. Being a frugal man, he would bring the cards home and use them for everything around the house, like scratch paper. We used to have a "treat card" that would be a behavior management tool during our family nights, and they would always be these cards. Other kids used baseball cards in the spokes of their bikes. Not us, we had these. -
First Camera
I ended up really liking photography, and I remember my first camera was a 110 film brick camera. It had a flash, and it took pretty terrible pictures. But it was fun to use. I remember having it all the way through middle school. -
A new family computer
My dad was pretty frugal, so even though he worked for a tech company, we were usually late in getting new tech. So it was a big deal when he got a computer that could actually run games from floppy disks or CD-Roms. This computer was kind of a formative part of my life. I will still go back and try to find the old DOS games this thing could run. It was also my first introduction to MP3s played on Winamp. Incidentally, this was also the computer I took to college 8 years later. It wasn't great. -
Gameboy Pocket
My brothers usually got all of the new stuff. They had the original GameBoy, and I was occasionally allowed to use it. But when I had saved enough from my paper route, I got a red GameBoy Pocket, and Pokemon. I remember getting in trouble one day because I went to do my paper route, and ended up sitting on the stacks of papers on the corner playing Pokemon for hours. It was dark when I finally finished the route, and I got in trouble because all of the papers were late. My mother was not happy. -
Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64 was a big part of my life. We first got one for Christmas, and we had multiplayer games that led to much fighting among the brothers. As the youngest, I remember watching each of my older brothers play through the Zelda game before I was allowed a chance to try. But the Nintendo 64 was the main element of every sleepover my friends and I had. We would stay up all night playing through Gauntlet Legends, or would spend hours playing Perfect Dark or GoldenEye. -
First Email Account
This one is interesting to me because I created a random user name based on some things that I was doing in my school at the time, and the name has stuck around 30 years later. I still have an email account under that name. -
First digital camera
I started working at a camera store in high school, so when I was headed to college, I wanted a camera to document my freshmen year. I got this little point and shoot, and I became the de facto cameraman for most of the silly hangouts that we had that year. Almost everything made it onto facebook, and I think they are still there... unfortunately. -
Facebook
I am of the generation that had all sorts of social media before we understood any of the ramifications. I am always proud to tell my students that I joined Facebook back when you had to have a college email address. I still remember the day when they opened it up to everyone else, and people were mad that it had lost its exclusivity. We would post anything and everything on facebook. -
First Cell Phone
I got my first cell phone after my first year of college. Before that I had to use the dorm phone to call my family. It was a flip phone that I had to learn T9 texting to use. It was the same thing most of my friends had when we were freshmen in high school. -
First Real Camera
I continued working at a camera store through college, and I started taking photography more seriously at that point. I had a co-worker who insisted that if I really wanted to learn, I needed to go all manual film. So he sold me an old Minolta SLR from the 70's. It was honestly a great way to learn because I had to understand what I was doing, and if I made a mistake, it would cost me money. I had to really think about what I was doing. -
First "professional" camera
I kept up with photography, and decided I was a point where I would really invest. So, I got a digital SLR, lenses, and some studio lights. It was a definitive point in my life, and even as I worked in theater, people would still ask me to take production photos of their shows for publicity. Family members had me do portraits and weddings. I have never fully invested, but it has definitely shaped my experiences. -
First Smartphone
I waited until I was a 31 year old man to get my first smartphone. It was a good and bad day for me. I started getting distracted a lot more, but I was able to be more productive as well.