Rememberment, Chapter XIV: The People's Computer

A new home computer had arrived on the market, the Commodore 64. Lauri was the first of my buddies to have one and asked me over. We played for hours and it was amazing - instead of ASCII characters we now had beautiful, colorful graphics, not to mention snazzy sounds and music. I was completely hooked.



The graphics were so great they could use screenshots as cover art for the actual game box.

Soon all of my friends and cousins had a C-64 and whenever I visited them, all I wanted to do is play. But no matter how much I begged my parents to buy one for me, it wasn't going to happen. "We don't have that kind of money" they said.


And while I understood when they told me that, it didn't exactly help. I already knew our family was poor; just about all of my stuff was something that had been previously owned by someone else. My bike was old and rusty and too small for me, my skates were too big for my feet, and my skis looked like they had seen at least a couple of wars.


But this was somehow different. Before the C-64 I had not wanted anything so bad in my life for myself, and I literally didn't know a single family who didn't have one. (There was a reason they called it the "People's Computer" - population-wise, it was sold more in Finland than anywhere else).


Missing out on it made me feel like I was the only kid who could never have anything nice.

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