One christmas, many moons ago, when I was but a wee geek, I had spotted an arcade, put-the-quarters-in game for sale for a few hundred dollars. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and I told mom how desperately I wanted it. I’d pretty much lay money that she told me it wasn’t going to happen. I’m also pretty sure this was in my devoutly catholic days, when I believed quietly, yet fervently in a benevolent, all-seeing god who wasn’t clearly differentiated from Santa Claus.
The day after christmas, with no arcade game in sight, we went to disney world, or disney land, whichever one is in florida. World, I think. I had the usual, that-was-mildly-entertaining, reaction. And the whole time, I was fantasizing about coming home and finding that arcade game waiting for me. I was dreaming about it so much (the fantasy kept me [relatively] well behaved on the plane home, probably at disney world and on the plane there, too), that I was disappointed when I came home, and found that there was no neato arcade game waiting for me. I was thinking, precociously enough, that I would so much rather have had the game than the trip, after all, I could use the game repeatedly, but the trip was over, and that it might very well have been cheaper, too. (I think I was born at least as much economist as geek. This would have been not too far from the time in my life where I started doing simple graphics-and-sound programs in TI-Basic). Fortunately, I was mature enough (or meek enough) at that point not to rant at the “injustice” in the world (I think), and I recognized that I was the one who had set me up for the fall. I still moped for several days.
It’s humbling to realize that I still set myself up for a fall sometimes, in ways not-so-very different, when I take the long view.