Reposted from here. https://stories.retro-exo.com/story/105/
1990.
We had all just started driving and bought CB radios for our cars so we could talk to each other and evade the cops.
Spoiler: None of us was doing anything remotely illegal.
It was the middle of high school for me in the US. I attended an all-boys college preparatory high school with guys who drove very expensive cars. I had a very used slant-six 1969 Plymouth Barracuda that was way cooler than I was.
There were just a few of us with PCs, and we all stuck together. This was the era when the “jocks” in the States ran the show. Us nerds kept to ourselves, but we had power! Not He-Man power, but power amongst ourselves. Each of us brought a gift.
We shared games. We copied floppies, and we beat the copy protection! I think it was as simple as my mom having access to office supplies. She brought home blank disks. She had access to a copy machine. She had a hole punch and magical little metal things we could put in the holes to make multiple pages spin. I was the guy who made the printouts for us all for Test Drive III: The Passion .
My friends and I drove uncool cars, but we had the power to drive very cool cars on our IBM PCs.
We also killed it at the arcade playing Hard Drivin’.
My old ’69 Barracuda was an automatic, but that game taught me to drive stick!
At home, we shared bootleg copies of Test Drive III. I had the power to share the copy protection. I’d print out the pages. I’d cut out the circular wheels to match up the codes needed to play the game. I’d affix the magical little metal thing in the hole cut by my mom’s hole punch and make the key to the game for us all.
We each had our gifts.
I made the game available.
Another offered the space to play and a mom who had lots of snacks.
Another had a grandma who made empanadas.
Life was easy.
More about that car here.
https://skywritings.net/2015/12/2015-12-07-at-16-i-had-no-muscles-but-i-drove-a-muscle-car/