Big Frick Dot Com

Who knew?

I recall back in October or November of 1987 my adorable first born Jessica said to me in her best fake sincere voice “Daddy, you don’t have to buy me anything for Christmas. All I want is an Apple 2GS for my birthday.”

Not knowing an Apple 2GS from an apple fritter I asked her to explain what this cryptic request meant. She went on to explain that an Apple 2GS was a computer and that she used one at school and if I wanted her to do well and be able to succeed in her studies I needed to buy her one for her upcoming 10th birthday present.

As her birthday was not until March I figured this request would go the way of most grade school girl requests and be replaced by some other equally expensive desire by the time the big day actually arrived. Little did I know that my little 9 year old, going on 29 year old, already had her strategic marketing plan in place. As had been proven prior and repeatedly proven since once this girl gets her mind focused on something there are no forces known to man that will dissuade her. Plus she was a little Daddy’s girl and even though Big Frick was big then, her little finger was big enough to wrap me around it. A contortion that all three of my beloved children have become proficient enough in to the point of making it a competitive sport.

Through the coming months Jessica never missed an opportunity to stoke the Apple 2GS fire, even going so far as to tell me that all her friends had made fun of her when she said she was hoping to get one for her birthday. Her Daddy couldn’t be a party to having her ridiculed by her classmates, could he?

I had already explained to Jessica that as far as I knew these things were probably more than I could spend on a 10 year old’s birthday gift. I think I even mentioned some of the things I would have gotten on my tenth birthday, something along the line of a new pair of school shoes and bag of dirt. She patiently waited until she saw my mouth stop moving and then repeated all the reasons why this would be such a smart and savvy investment on my part.

So as her birth date approached I figured I would check and see just how much one of these magic boxes cost. This was before Apple stores or even the big box stores, so if one wanted to buy a computer one had to find a computer store. I located one that was less than a day’s drive from my house and entered into the land of mega thingies and memory do dads.

I may as well have had a colored cellophane wrapper when I walked in as the salesmen literally knocked each other over to assist the blank faced sucker that just came through their doors. By today’s terms the Apple 2GS was less powerful and had less memory than your average pocket calculator. It came as a set with a big white box computer, a big white TV screen monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. The only thing I remember about its capabilities was that the salesman said this computer was about 100 times more powerful than the computer NASA used to send up the first moon landing.

The adept sales clerk rattled off all the important facts and statistics about this model though he may as well have been speaking in Chinese. None of it made any sense to me until we got to that magic time when he revealed the price of this little techno-marvel.

It was at that moment I was truly grateful I had decided to forego lunch until after my shopping visit as I doubt there could have been a subtle explanation for what would have surely happened. All this technology and they would throw in a compatible printer for right around three grand.

Three thousand dollars is a ridiculous amount to spend on a ten year old today, but in 1988 it would have taken someone completely out of their mind. Fortunately for my daughter I was just that lunatic. I negotiated a little with the salesman and finally pulled out a credit card I was pretty sure would accept that level of purchase and drove away with my head still spinning. If I recall I never did get that lunch as I feared the residual effect could have been equally tragic.

Needless to say it was a birthday present that is still fondly remember long after the computer has gone to the big memory chip in the sky.

I tell that story to say that since then Jessica has become an absolute whiz on the computer. She is able to design remarkably complex web sites and can write code to improve existing programs. It was at her insistence that I even have this blog site. She is the one that pushed me into writing in the first place and set it all up. She is the one who is constantly improving it and adding new options like the subscription box and the Team Big Frick salon. She is indeed my little web monkey. I am not certain if her motives were magnanimous in getting me to share my views with the world at large rather than just with her and my immediate friends or to simply gather enough evidence so as to be able to have me committed.

Who knew those 21 years ago that it would be an outrageous purchase that would alter her future in such a way and lead to an extraordinary path of progress and education? Who knew that a little 10 year old would grow up to be the driving force behind her father’s soon to be realized fame and fortune in the blogosphere and the real reason Al Gore invented the internet? Who knew that the language of the future would be binary and the world would be virtual?

Who knew?

I guess she did.