This was before the internet existed in any real sense that would be recognizable today.

To telephone someone you used a rotary dial.

To drink a soda (like a Tab or a Shasta) you had to first peel off the pop tab.

To play music you had to put a needle on a spinning disc.

Things were different then.

I lived in a group home at the time, one day I met this girl at school and I started walking her home. I, clad in tube socks and cut-offs, would even carry her violin.

The girl I would walk home had a Vic-20 computer.

I liked her…

Vic-20.

I would go to her house everyday and we would talk for hours, if  “talking for hours” means “I used her Vic-20 while she read Jack London novels”.

She had “Mole Attack” and “SeaWolf”.

Her father had what could only be described as an insane amount of reference books for computing. I read them all.

To set up a Vic-20 required a screwdriver.

You hooked it up to the UHF screws on the back of your TV. There was a switch and with that switch you could go from TV to Computer land.

Computer land was a nice place for me, the boys in my group home could be mean at times. Let’s just say they didn’t know what an infinite loop was.

The more time I could spend with her…

Vic-20, the better.

She would kiss me sometimes beneath her Benji poster, but I figured this was a small price to pay for computer time (ends up I was wrong about that – women are only attractive to me now if they wear frumpy sweaters and thick glasses).

When you flipped that switch from TV to Computer, you saw a display that would wow anyone…

Are you ready to enter a dream world of magic?

I was amazed by what I could make occur. For example, if I wanted to have the word “hello” show up on the computer screen, all I had to do was program this…

10 PRINT “{SHIFT+CLRSCRN}”
20 PRINT “HELLO”
30 END

Like magic, the word “hello” would appear on the screen, because I, Godlike, had decreed it to be.

Things were so simple, If I wanted to move the cursor all I had to do was use the cursor keys…

You could do anything!

I remember when her Dad told me he had bought something I would like. He had a smile on his face.
I was kinda nervous until he revealed what he had bought…

What am I, a king?

Who on earth could use so much memory?

Okay, back to modern life… I recently saw an ad for a Vic 20 from 1982 and I would like to highlight the selling features of the Vic 20. The ad listed 26 reasons to buy a Vic-20.

Including…

Reason No. 2…

25 K, baby. What you gonna say bout that?

Reason No.3…

This monster can go up to 27 and 1/2 k Ram.

Reason No.11…

This one is a crazy cool…

U to the L. This puppy has the ability to show both upper and lower case letters.

Want some Specs?

That aint all…

This thing roars like a lion

I just turned 40 years old.
I am very happy I met that girl.
She had a lovely Vic-20, and a name.

I don’t remember her name, but her Vic-20 rocked.

People are even still buying and selling these on Ebay!

Need a thirty year old computer to relive your childhood? Here are Vic-20 items on Ebay right now (hilarious, and how my walk down memory lane started in the first place)…

How to Open Beer?

With lighter.

Some are just nifto funny when you are drunk.

This monkey can really do some serious moves (you can click somewhere on a branch and watch the monkey jump to where ever you clicked, you can also click on the “more” tab and grab a banana, put it anywhere on the screen and see what happens). There are more virtual pet gadgets here, people eat these up like candy for some reason.

To have this on your iGoogle homepage, just click the “+Google” tab beneath the gadget or add it here.

Google gadgets even work in feeds… hmmm.

Like Google Gadgets?- see all my Google gadget articles or if you looking for gadgets see the Gadzi gadgets directory