Oregon trail

In a few hours I'm heading to Portland, OR for work and it made me think of the computer game "Oregon Trail" that we played in elementary school. I believe the intent of the game was to teach kids how to plan and prepare, but I'm not exactly sure it succeeded in my case.

I remember vividly having to insert big, black floppy disks into the computer, waiting for it to give me the signal to enter the next disk and continuing the process for several minutes in order for the game to load. When you were finally in the game and able to play, it prompted the user to answer several questions about rationing resources amongst different supply categories like food, weaponry, medicine and misc. It was always this last category, misc. that tripped me up.

For whatever reason, my young panda mind always mis-read "misc." as "music" and I thought it was all about entertainment. And I never allotted any of my dollars to that category and therefore never made it across the country to Oregon! I don't think I actually ever made it past the Mississippi River. Instead, some rogue "enemy" or scurvy would do me and my poor family in every single time.