My dad bought an IBM when I was two years old. It took a year or so for me to climb into the chair, but by kindergarten I was already in Movie Maker.

This is the part in the story where you normally see “programming” by seven, sold an operating system by ten, and left the board for Microsoft by high school prom.

But I was never interested in anything but the internet, videos, and free MP3s.

I wish I had a photo or video of me at that computer.

The stack of boxes with photo prints and VHS tapes never saw the light of day again after my dad left.

Computers are more than machines to me.

They are another layer of the universe.

To me, every child was made to grow and run. Too often, the environment fails to hold the brilliance of a child.

I did not need this reality.

I had my own.

I could fail the test. I could get bullied by anyone. I could watch someone else take the pretty girl to the dance.

Because that was not my world.

My world was in front of my computer.

And it still is.

The photo at the top is me with my childhood best friends, the two sons of my mom’s college roommate, gathered in the world I kept returning to.

You could imagine the look on the teacher’s face when computer lab came around, and not only did I complete the typing assignments in minutes, but I had AddictingGames through the school’s firewall.

I was not a genius.

I did not even know what hacking was.

I just knew the sticky note on the monitor had the teacher’s password written on it.

Thirty years of computer science and cybersecurity later, and the simplest way through is still the front door.

I never thought I would say this, but kids today do not have the world that I escaped into.

And it did not take a generation. I watched the door close when I was in middle school.

Much to the horror of my ten-year-old self, my family decided on an iMac for the new family computer.

I loved the iPhone. I wanted an iPhone. Every kid in school had one or wanted one.

But the iMac was outrageously expensive, came very locked down, and came with way too easy-to-use parental controls.

I was limited to one hour a day.

Two on the weekends.

My world shrank from a galaxy to not-a-walk-in-closet in one trip to the mall.

I paid both of my sisters in chores and whatever I had for their hour, and cracked almost every password my parents set.

John.

Halloween.

Poptart.

I will never forget those three words.

The keys back into my Milky Way.

When I reached high school, Mrs. Russo was my favorite teacher. English class was always my strong suit.

Actually, it was my only suit.

And it was not even an ace.

A month into high school, Mrs. Russo had a computer sitting next to her desk.

Bundled up, it looked like it was waiting to be picked up by FedEx.

I stared at it for thirty days before I finally worked up the courage to ask what the story was.

She told me the high school’s IT department could not fix it, and no one had ever come to carry it to the dumpster.

English was first period, but when she finally got past the puzzled look on her face, I said thank you and left with my world back in my arms.

The look on my tenth-grade teacher’s face when I requested AP still haunts me.

Luckily for me, the eleventh-grade AP English teacher was one year from retirement.

When the “American Identity” project came due, asking for fifteen pages minimum, Mr. Currie loved mine.

I found this out a year later, when the prettiest girl in school happened to be sitting across the table from me and said, “What did you do for your identities project? Also, go fish.”

I submitted nothing.

I cannot even recall receiving the assignment.

And that was the perfect submission for me.

My world was never in school.

Even when my body was sitting in one of the chairs, my heart was out the window, putting more RAM into my computer.

Mr. Currie must have seen it too.

He gave me a C.

I slipped through my only AP class by the grace of a man in the final year of a long teaching career.

But calling it grace makes it sound like he simply looked the other way.

I do not think that is what happened.

When Mr. Currie retired, he said, “I liked all sorts of students.”

I was certainly one of the sorts.

I was distracted, absent even when present, and far more interested in computers than coursework. I was not the kind of student who proved his intelligence by completing every assignment. Most of the time, I was not interested in proving anything at all.

Mr. Currie did not mistake that for emptiness.

He saw a student whose attention lived somewhere beyond the classroom, and instead of punishing me for belonging to another world, he left the door open between that world and his.

A harsher teacher might have failed me.

A more indifferent teacher might not have noticed me.

Mr. Currie did neither.

He gave me enough room to remain myself and enough mercy to keep moving forward.

Mrs. Russo may have been my favorite teacher when I entered high school, but by the time I left, that title belonged to Mr. Currie.

Not because he taught me to become a better student.

He taught me that a good teacher can recognize a person before that person has learned how to explain himself.

I do not remember anything from AP English.

But I remember Hannah and Mr. Currie like I am writing this from the back of the classroom.