One by one, let me be gone.

Minesweeper was the game I have always played in the late 90s, but have never really understood or paid attention to how it works until about 5 years later.

I started using computers when I was in high school. It was the time when Windows (whatever the version was) seemed like a matrix to me. I'd panic and literally lose my breath whenever I accidentally clicked on the minimize button, thinking that I was screwed because the whole system was going to crash or that someone had lost his/her work forever upon losing the window in sight. Whenever that happened, I'd rush back to my mother's office just adjacent to the library where the computers were and swore to never admit that I was the one who screwed the system.

No one has ever confronted me, nor have I heard any complaints about the minimized windows.

Fast-forward to my college days in 2001. It was then that I discovered chat platforms like Yahoo Chat, ICQ and mIRC. I am a fast-learner (I know, i know, this is an overused term), and I actually learned most of what I know on my own.

I met my first boyfriend, V.R. thru Yahoo Chat. We chatted for about a month before we decided to meet up and make it official. I was turning 17, while he was 32, but he initially claimed he was 27, so one could say he definitely knew a lot.

I was at my favorite internet cafe one time when he sent me his picture thru the chat program and I immediately thought, "This man is definitely not 27." But, whatever. He was my first boyfriend, and he was 32 for effs sake, so I was easily talked into the relationship. (Well, I did have a "boyfriend" when I was 12 but it only came as far as stuffed toys, chocolates, teeny-weeny phone calls and sweet talks while I was playing hard to get. There was really no "We're together now" moment.)

V.R. wasn't really good looking, but looked tall in the picture, although he was really only 5 ft. 'tall' in person. Apparently, he requested for my picture, too. I eagerly succumbed. I was confident anyway because I knew I would be a pretty sight to him. He told me to scan the picture and send it to him online. No problem!

"A picture, a picture..." I murmured. Aha! I knew I had one in my wallet, so I hurriedly searched for it and found my 1x1 ID picture.

"He'd definitely go nuts when he sees this picture!"

Holding the photo, I called on the internet shop attendant to ask for assistance in sending the picture to my boyfriend because it was my first time to do it.

The attendant was very polite and accommodating. It was their shop's marketing campaign anyway: Free tutorial and assistance.

He advised me to scan the picture first. So, I told him, "Yeah, I know. So I should put it here, right?"

Then came the look on his face.

Flabbergasted. Confused. Trying so hard to hide his amusement.

...
..
.

I was inserting my 1x1 ID picture in the floppy drive.



Prologue

A week later, I found myself in the same shop asking how much a hard drive is.

That same look on the attendant's face.

I told them I was referring to a 3 1/2 in. floppy disk, because the 5 1/4 in. was THE soft disk.