When I was little, I had too much time. How did I waste it? Playing FreeCell, of course.

I’m old enough that I didn’t have my own computer when I was little. We had a “family computer” that was, for better or worse, on a tiny table between the living room and the dining area. It was beige-grey, it’s fans were too noisy, and it was made a company with an equally funny name: Packard Bell. Fellow Millennials, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This was an era when the first Pentium chips were premium items. As such, our mid-range PC was a lowly 486dx2, running at 66Mhz. Windows 95 was brand-spanking new, and I lamented that the computer would be out-of-date when 1996 showed up. Oh well. This type of talk was the banter of the day, between talks about the latest Seinfeld episode, the unfortunate passing of singer Selena, a dude being chase on the high in white Bronco, and a newfangled internet book “store” called, “Amazon”. What a stupid name for a store, right?

What did I really do on the computer, anyway? I don’t really remember, honestly. We didn’t use the internet much (we used “NetZero”, remember that?). So, digging through what was available to me, I discovered the following games:

1. Hearts
2. Minesweeper
3. Solitaire
4. FreeCell

Amongst my family, my older sister really enjoyed Hearts. We all didn’t get Minesweeper. Solitaire was a little too pedestrian for me. FreeCell, however - I fucking loved FreeCell.

How can I explain what FreeCell is? It was kind of like the Solitaire that was included with Windows, only… better. For lack of a better word.

Its layout consists of a standard deck of cards arranged in eight columns and it had these special ‘cells’ for temporarily storing cards which, to me, made it involve a bit more strategy that the bog-standard solitaire. At least, that’s what I told myself (the draw-three version of Solitaire was just too frickin’ hard).

I dunno what kept me playing after all this time. I do like winning FreeCell though. You know what I’m talking about right? Check this:

Or was that from Solitaire? I don’t remember ¯\(ツ)/¯

And then you have this asshat watching your every move:

Judgmental, I tell you. The pure look of smug disdain as you lost, reset your game (again)! I love you and I hate you at the same time!

Anyway, if you haven’t done so in a while, give your FreeCell a call and a hug. I’m going to play you now.gif