16KB and the Truth

Back in 1980 my dad bought the family a TRS-80 Colour Computer from Radio Shack complete with a four-colour printer. The printer had four pens, Red, Green, Blue, Black and was about the size of a receipt printer. We saved our programs on a cassette recorder because the TRS-80 had a whopping 16KB of memory. Eventually we got the ‘Internet’ before the Internet was a thing—an acoustic coupler modem that connected our black Bakelite™-style rotary phone with the world of message boards. You know, the kind of phone you’d kill people with in movies? This is where I cut my teeth and became inspired to learn how to program in BASIC in order to create graphics and music out of nothing.

Fast forward a couple of years and my mom was neck deep in journalism. She had a fancy computer with a program called Aldus™ Pagemaker that enabled her to layout pages (hence the name) like a magazine. I was hooked. She also had a text-based game called ‘Adventure’ that sadly we never finished—forever lost in twisty-turny-passages.

There wasn’t really any formal training for this stuff back then for kids—maybe my mom had a class or two at SAIT? I’ll have to ask. Mom? You’re reading this right, did you have a Pagemaker class? However it happened, the knowledge and passion for laying out pages was passed along and I started learning what to do and how to do it through trial and error.

It’s funny how these various life events conspired to create my future; I started my first side-hustle as a graphic artist (Radical Artistic Tendencies Design / RAT Design) in the late eighties, eventually landing a job teaching and writing curriculum for New Horizons Computer Learning Centre, to running Applied Multimedia Training Centres, to five years as Communications Director for Service Intelligence, then back to teaching at Mount Royal, all before starting my own creative agency 15 years ago.

My parents lit the fuse, starting when my dad bought us that first personal computer and then watching my mom pursue her passion for writing. Because of their support (even during my ‘Dumb Years’) and their ‘lead by example’ way of parenting, I continue to live a fulfilling and creative life on my terms. I also get to teach what I know around the world (next week I’ll be back teaching in the Netherlands via Zoom) and am able to literally work from anywhere in the world.

My point for this post is simply this: Parental support is critical to the development of your kids (duh). But more than just cheering us on (which they always did), for me it was seeing my parents lead by example and follow their passions; and of course, not giving up when things got tough. All of that, and a sweet-ass 16KB Tandy Colour Computer.