Thirty years ago, driven by poverty and lack of opportunities, me and my family illegally crossed the border from Tijuana into San Diego. We had some friends in Pasadena who received us in a spare bedroom while we settled. Since I was eleven years old, I was enrolled in the sixth grade of the local elementary school.
The teacher (Ms Castro) was incredibly gracious with this tiny Mexican who didn't speak a word of english. I was only required to participate in math and art clases (Also, it seemed like Mexican fifth grade math was more advanced than California‘s so I looked like a genius ;)) and on some ESL courses the school offered while skipping classed that required English.
Anyway, there was this one computer in ms Castro‘s classroom. It was an Apple machine, but I could not tell you which one because this was the first computer I ever touched. So the teacher instructed some other hispanic kid to show me how to turn the computer on and "play" with this toy program called Logo so I have something to do while the others kids are in class. I spent hours and hours each day with this thing; fast forward a couple months and I was not only drawing but writing programs that produced musical animations to the astonishments of the entire class.
It was a great experience --pretty much the only positive experience we had while in the US--. Five months later we had to get back, and I wouldn't have access to a personal computer for another 9 years. I always wondered what would've happened if we stayed.
Anyway, Logo was my introduction to computing and helped my keep my sanity during my five months as an illegal immigrant.