Firsts

A few random firsts...

First 8 Track Tape: ABBA's Greatest Hits, Volume 1
If you are in your mid-30's or younger, you probably don't know what an 8 Track tape is, but that's okay. Think of the 8 Track as being like a cassette tape, only bigger. Anyway, I bought it at a record store in downtown Scranton, back in the day when such things existed. I'm not sure why I picked that particular 8 Track tape, but I do remember playing it over and over again. I ended up having several 8 Track tapes actually, some of which (including two by ABBA) I now own on CD.

First LP: Blondie Parallel Lines
I'm not even going to bother explaining what an LP is, other than to say it also goes by the name "record". Anyway, after I bought my first real stereo (at long-forgotten named discount department store in Dunmore), I needed a record to play on it, and Blondie's "Heart of Glass" was popular, so I bought it. I ended up buying many, many more albums over the years. My mother actually had a large number of LPs growing up, and I remember many an hour spent listening to "West Side Story" on the home stereo. "You're never alone, you're never disconnected, you're home on your own, company suspected, you're well protected".

First Crush: 6th Grade
The girl was named Patty, and at the time I actually, kinda, sorta actually fit in. Don't worry, by the time puberty hit full-on, all that would change. Anyway, she was a nice girl and I had absolutely no clue as to what I should or could do about the crush I had on her. I suspect that these days that's not the case.

First Date: My Junior Prom
Honestly, I think this was my first real date. My God, it took so much courage on my part to even ask the girl to go with me, as I had such a crush on her. Oh, and I was so nerdy, dorky, etc. To make matters worse, I wore (I think) a white Tux. Note that at the time I was very tall and very thin, meaning that I ended up looking like a Q-Tip. Anyway, the Prom was el-busto for reasons that to this day are too many to count and too painful to recall. Somewhere there is a picture of this. To my date...Sharon...all I can say is this: "I'm Sorry!".

First Car: 1974 Plymouth Duster
It was a light green in color, except for the front quater panel, which was orange (actually it was green and rusted originally, so I got a used orange one from DeNaples junk yard). No carpet. AM radio. Reverse that really didn't want to work most of the time...think reving the motor and a giant "thud" when it went into gear. I shared the car with my brother Rich.

First Computer: Commodore Vic20
I bought this pig from someone in Mechanicsburg while I was in college. It had something like 1K of memory. It did nothing. I repeat, nothing. No disk drive. No hardrive. I think I wrote little programs that would tell it to make sounds. I now have watches with more processing power.