"Let's go randomly sing together!" — Dylan.

We watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers tonight, and watching it reminded me of when we first saw it 11 years ago. Dad saw it on TV and told the rest of us about it, and after buying it, we went to the library (then the only internet source) to research the movie. I remember signing in at the librarian's desk and then squeezing in with Mom between two thin partitions to use the computer. The monitor was one of those mile-long, yellowed CRTs, and you used either Internet Explorer (aah!) or Netscape. I didn't even know how to go back. I'd go to a page and get stuck there. (I told Dylan about that tonight, and he couldn't believe I didn't know how to use a back button. He's 11 now, the same age I was at that time, and knows how to do a heck of a lot more with a computer than I did at 11.)

I remember using a text browser at some point too. The screen was entirely black and the text came out lime green (early Myspace anyone?). 11 years and we've gone from text browsers, IE (unfortunately, it's still around), and Netscape to IE (yeah, someone do something about this), Firefox, Opera, Camino, and whatever other minority browsers that are floating around out there. (Side note, Opera is good. Except for when it crashes, freaks out on Apple's and Myspace's CSS styles, crashes, doesn't export certain things, and crashes. I jumped ship to Firefox.)

The day of the text browser was the time when I was into acting and singing, not long before my siblings and I were in local productions of The Sound of Music and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and… (insert other random 11-year-old memory here.)

We watched a lot of musicals back then.