We first met in the early 1980s, in the pulsating glow of the family TV screen. The picture was taken over by the Timex Sinclair 1000 connected to its VHF screw terminals. We clicked immediately.
Since then, my life has changed in just about every way life can change. New cities, new roles, new responsibilities, new chapters. Along the way, I’ve cycled through countless computers. But you, terminal, have remained mostly yourself.
You were there on the TI-99/4A, running BASIC and video game knockoffs like chain man. You were there waiting for me in the fourth grade on an Apple computer, the green and black monochrome glow beckoning me from inside the closet-turned-computer-station — where I learned how to use Logo to tell a little triangle-shaped "turtle" where to go. You were there again on the Apple IIe at home, opening doors to BBSs and text adventures, places where the world inside a CRT monitor was larger than the one I knew.
In the early 90s, you had a whole different look going on when DOS became the norm. I thought you might get buried under the rubble of excitement for Windows 3.1. I quickly realized you were still there when I needed you. A click could only get you so far, but the terminal provided endless possibilities. Yes, we broke and bricked a few things along they way, but we got (most of) it figured out.
Shortly after arriving at college, I found you again, in the basement of the math building, where rows of Unix terminals glowed in the dim, dusty air. I logged in with my freshly minted university account, and it felt like reuniting with an old friend. That screen gave me access to Gopher, email, telnet, and MUDs — gateways to information and people from all over the world.
When I finally bought my own PC, I brought you home with me. No more waiting for an open machine in the lab. I could connect directly to the university’s servers from my dorm room — using a dial-up modem and a telnet connection.
People say the only constant is change, and they’re right to say it. But the terminal has always been my exception. Sure, you’ve moved around a lot, from Apple to Windows, and Unix to Linux, but you haven’t changed who you are — a gateway to worlds beyond.
Today, I work with you professionally as a software engineer and Linux system administrator. The context is different now: production systems, uptime, incidents, deployments, databases, all the grown-up concerns that come with responsibility. But, we’re still learning and growing together, after all these years.
Every time I open a terminal window and see that prompt, I feel grounded. It’s like stepping into a familiar place that has quietly held steady, waiting for you to return. In a world that rarely slows down and never stops reinventing itself, that kind of continuity is more than nostalgia.
It is reassurance.