it's 1996 or something. 10-year-old me is eating breakfast with the principal in an elementary school cafeteria. this is my reward for a high score on the FCAT state writing test. i'm disappointed that the food is standard Florida elementary school breakfast fare and not something fancier. they'd played this thing up to be a big deal.

it's fine though, i don't think i deserved the honor. they gave me an expository essay prompt on Abraham Lincoln and I instead penned a comedy-fantasy with a shoehorned-in last minute Lincoln cameo. my influences were narrow so it probably read like an unserious R.L. Stine short minus the horror. towards the end i threw in a cheeky joke about not following the rules hoping that my judges were amenable to snarky little scofflaws. i guess they were.


Floral Avenue Elementary in Bartow, FL
this was often a thing with me. starting at the age of 8 i simply would (could?) not start assignments i found too challenging (long division destroyed me. it snowballed into never passing pre-algebra by my senior year of highschool) or creative exercises i found pointless (persuasive essays. why would I try to persuade someone of a topic I had no interest in or knowledge of?) and instead opted to write short form fantasy and science fiction stories or draw detailed maps of made-up places.

i was also bonkers about computers and the World Wide Web, though we couldn't afford a PC and i suspected we never would. didn't stop me from picking up the itch from TV, magazines (begging for PC Gamer and PC World mags at the supermarket was a thing i did a lot) and any middle-class acquaintances who'd let me spend the night at their cool houses.

i first used a computer myself at an unofficial before-school daycare program that this saintly special needs teacher ran. she was often busy so she'd let me use the classroom Mac (a Power Macintosh 5200 LC to be exact) and it was heavenly. i most often played Oregon Trail, The Incredible Machine 2, and whichever version of KidPix she had. in 1997 my parents took out a bank loan and purchased a Packard Bell Multimedia PC from Best Buy. it looked like this:


source: The Nostalgia Mall (YouTube)
by that time i'd collected enough magazine demo discs and thrift store games (i read the manuals for fun) that i had a few things to play, though it would be another two years before i could convince the parents to go in for internet access.

at 11 years old I was diagnosed with ADHD Primarily Inattentive, which in my case means that i don't do (or remember to do) things that i'm uninterested in without a disciplined routine or medication. i did take meds for a few months but stopped because i kept forgetting. my parents were too busy trying to make ends meet to push me on it. i was embarrassed about the diagnosis and wasn't sure if ADHD was real or if I was just being a lazy turd.

my first year of middle school (i was 11-12?) was my academic downfall. i never did homework and rarely did classwork. i was picked-on a lot and made sure to ~stand up for myself~ resulting in embarrassing fights i never won thanks to being short. plenty of detention too. we had parent-teacher meetings every quarter about "turning a new leaf" and getting caught up on assignments but it never took. i gave up. i did, however, discover Dragonball Z, naughty unofficial Dragonball Z (thanks Chris for the floppy), Eminem, KoRn, and a computer program called The Games Factory.
The Games Factory. screenshot from Anatholy Shashkin

The Games Factory was a "no programming required" 2D game development suite developed by Europress (later Clickteam) and released in 1996. It was the successor to Klik n Play and was followed by Multimedia Fusion. All three programs share the same lineage and core feature set. The software persists today as Clickteam Fusion 2.5 and includes almost full backwards compatibility. Some of the original KnP bugs even persist. (This is a good thing. Ask me about it in a YouTube comment or something if you're curious.)

** under ** construction ** sidebar with The Games Factory and K&P sidebar graphics

during my final year of middle school a sympathetic art teacher got me an audition at a fancy art academy which would've probably been perfect but sadly I decided that the judges would rather see traced pictures of Goku and Starcraft Hydralisks and Gordon Freeman than my own original artwork (which was cool, I was pretty good for my age) and they rejected me. THANKS JAPAN. THANKS COMPUTERS.

** under ** construction ** high school computer classes. refusal to use powerpoint. missing "dill" file.

** under ** construction ** real-life friendships evaporating. the Klik community.

** under ** construction ** game releases.
16-year-old Jay Tholen. 2003. probably around Christmas.
** under ** construction ** skipping class and dropping out.

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