Spring Lab - faehnri.ch

Spring Lab

a memory in time

2021-02-21

The weather is breaking in Cleveland and winter is slowly giving way to spring. Temperatures are above freezing, and the melting snow is filling the air with a palpable moisture.

As the world is coming back to life and noise is returning after the the muted winter, it brings back certain feelings and memories. One of those memories associated with this time for me was going into my university computer lab.

It's the same with how smells can get associated with certain memories, I don't know exactly why spring reminds me of a computer lab. Maybe I was in there more in the spring. Or maybe since it was in the basement of a dorm, it was more humid and the air conditioning didn't work as well.

For those not familiar, universities have (had?) rooms with just desktop computers for students to use to write or print papers and do other work.

I didn't have a computer when I started school so I'd go to my dorm's basement to go online or do work. I came there often enough that the student that had the job of running the lab would give me a nod.

Only occasionally would there be another student, usually to quickly print a paper before it was due.

But I was in there often enough that I would install computer games. I had a "dual jewel" game that was both Fallout and Fallout 2 in a double-sided CD case.

We weren't supposed to install our own software on lab computers. Anything like that should have been removed. But maybe the student that ran the lab saw I was a fellow computer nerd, or liked the games I installed, because he never removed anything I put on those computers.

So I probably built that association by going out into the warmer and wet spring night after some good nights in lab where I enjoyed some RPGs.