Were you ever given a present as a child that influenced you as an adult?

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Was anything given to you as a child that influenced your later life? A microscope? A drawing set? An album by your favorite singer? How did it influence it?--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), September 30, 1999

Answers

We were fairly poor even by the standards of the 60es, like mended and darned clothes and stuff. But somehow my parents would surprise me with popular science books. One of them I remember in particular was about computers. I devoured it raw. At the end was a tentative hint that one day we might have computers in our homes! I fantasized about actually having a computer of my own. It would fill half the room, of course, but it would do something magical: It would let me edit photographs! -Those books, and particular that one perhaps, did a lot to make me feel at home in the future, and now I live there and work with computers... and sometimes edit pictures at home for fun!

-- Magnus Itland (itlandm@online.no), October 01, 1999.

I wasn't exactly given it. I had to buy half. My parents paid for half my first guitar; I had to pay the other half with my own money. I was 13. Not exactly a child, huh? But not even an adult, either. That guitar changed my life. I started taking lessons (I think they were $2 a week!) Then I got good enough to start teaching my friends to play (hey, I needed someone to jam with!) So I started charging them $.50 a lesson. Eventually it went up to a dollar, then finally $2. I taught all through high school. I traded that guitar in for a better one, which I still have (my Kent classical). I played for years, off and on, depending on what my life was like. I put it down recently, and when I went to pick it back up, I found my hands were too weak to hold down the strings on either of my guitars -- the Kent or the Mountain. A friend has since loaned me his Yamaha with super light strings. We're jamming tonight, and I've just taken on two guitar students!

Sunshyn

-- Sue Ford (classo88@aol.com), October 01, 1999.


My parents gave me a paint by number kit for my birthday when I was young. I was so excited, my first *real* paints. I ignored the picture printed on the canvas and made my own creation. I have never stopped painting since.

-- Carol of Suicide Blonde (carolm@zoomnet.net), October 01, 1999.

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