WHEN I WAS A BOY

(by Frank Hayes)

When I was a boy our Nintendo
Was carved from an old Apple tree
And we used garden hose to connect it
To our steam-powered color tv.

But it still beat that ancient Atari
‘Cuz I almost went blind, don’tcha know,
Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game
Hooked up to the radio.

	And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
	Barefoot, uphill both ways,
	Through blizzards in summer and winter
	Back in the good old days.
	  Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran
	  And the PC was only a toy
	  And we did our computing by gaslight
	When I was a boy.

When I was a boy all our networks
Were for hauling in fish from the sea–
Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!),
And our IP address was just 3.

And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web
Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin’,
‘Cuz when I was a boy every packet
Was delivered by carrier pigeon

	And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
	Barefoot, uphill both ways,
	Through blizzards in summer and winter
	Back in the good old days.
	  Back when Fortran was not even Two-tran
	  And the mainframe was only a toy
	  And we did our computing by torchlight
	When I was a boy.

When I was a boy our IS shop
Built relational tables from wood,
And we wrappered our data in oilcloth
To preserve it the best that we could.

And we carried our bits in a bucket,
And our mainframe weighed 900 tons,
And we programmed in ones and in zeros
And sometimes we ran out of ones.

	And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
	Barefoot, uphill both ways,
	Through blizzards in summer and winter
	Back in the good old days.
	  Back when Fortran was not even One-tran
	  And the abacus? Only a toy!
	  And we did our computing in primordial darkness
	When I was a boy.

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