I was finishing cleaning out the basement – my section of it, anyway – when I came across my old laptop. I bought it from Dell 13 years ago for only $450. I had purchased it so that I had something ‘portable’ to take around with me while I was studying for my doctorate. It had a 15-inch monitor and must have weighed 4 pounds. It was slow by 2006 standards and I was already running a lite-version of Linux by the 2010, because Windows was too cumbersome. Soon enough, it had become a fixture in the basement, waiting for me to take out the hard drive and drill a few holes in it.
When I rediscovered it on Sunday, I called up to Austin and asked him to come downstairs. He came down the stairs briskly, “Yeah, Dad?”
I held out the laptop with 3 small screwdrivers resting on top. “I have this old laptop I’m gonna throw away – but before I do, I was wondering …” I started, before being interrupted.
“I can take it apart!?”
I told him to go for it – and he did.
For the next 2 hours, Austin was in his glory. He kept calling me over to the table, asking me to explain what different parts of the laptop’s guts were called (e.g. ethernet, processor, RAM, heat sink, etc) and what they were for. He plans to make a necklace from the modem chip, using it as a pendant of sorts. He took pictures and sent them to his school account so that he could show his friends and teachers what he had the pleasure of doing the day before.
I had to laugh – we had spent hundreds of dollars on Christmas gifts for him only 4 months ago. Turns out that we had the most enjoyable gift resting on the floor in the recesses of my basement … and it was already paid for.