I remember a
radio controlled sailboat in the pond at the park when I was 3. The day was calm and fine. We would walk through the park as a
family looking at the trees and the gardens and the water.
I remember computing in high school. I had to use manual switches to load machine code into a Sperry Univac (model 7200 I think) just to get the card reader functional. I punched out all the positions of a card just to see what the reader would do with it. (It ate it). There was a telex machine in the computer room attached via modem (that the physics teacher made from scratch) to the University of Waterloo IBM model 360 that constantly clattered away. Eventually the school got a Radio Shack TRS-80 with a tape deck to load and record programs, but we still loved the old dinosaur Univac. We used a 150 card FORTRAN compiler deck with Japanese instructions, so we were never quite sure what it would and wouldn't do.
I remember being sad as a teenager but never (not to this day) really knowing why. I got along with the geeks and the jocks and all those in between, but I didn't really fit in with any group or [classification[. I remember deciding when I was 13 that nothing was worth getting that angry about, and summarily turning all strong emotion off until I was 17 and spending 4 years basically numb. For a while I was so afraid of making the wrong choice that I was crippled and couldn't even tell the waitress whether or not I wanted ketchup.
Just recently, I remember what it is like to be lonely. While I've spent a lot of time alone, I couldn't remember being lonely, but now I do remember. It's that feeling that even though you could call halfway around the world, wake them up and talk with them, that there would be, could be, no real communication or connection. That the words would be wasted and lost. That no one would understand.
I remember what it feels like to be loved. To love with an overwhelming hunger. To want someone so badly that a touch from their hand or a word from their lips could leave me breathless, dazed and senseless. And I have felt love that was unconditional, for which I felt unprepared and unworthy and for which I am struggling the rest of my life to become worthy.