Not only was my sister brilliant (the coin of the realm in our family), she was very good to me. Unfortunately, she went away to college in 1956. I was just 10 years old, and I missed her terribly.
My sister taught me as much as one could teach a 10-year-old about computer science, binary numbers, and even gave me some of the miniature round disks used in computers to represent zeroes and ones for a science project. Nobody (including the teacher) was impressed. Once my sister took my parents to IBM to see one of the first computers ever built. I think it was around 1961. She said that the computer filled the whole room. I wished she took me.
Here’s a little background … the computer revolution took place without much notice on my part. To be fair, I was more interested in the Cuban Revolution and the political clash that was taking place in Miami, my hometown. With Russian missiles, Cuban refugees, and military tanks (really) in the streets of Miami, I had little time to follow IBM and the revolution in information technology.
But in 1964, I graduated from a Catholic girls' school in Coconut Grove. That same year, The Berkeley Free Speech movement, took place at the University of California when students were prohibited from raising funds for political causes on campus. Berkeley students came out in huge numbers to protest.
They considered IBM a symbol of computerization and dehumanization. In the most famous speech of the movement, Mario Savio said, "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, it makes you so sick at heart, that...you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon wheels...and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
Two thousand miles away, however, the atmosphere was quite different. I was a freshman at Barat College of the Sacred Heart, an all women’s Catholic college in rural Lake Forest, Illinois. When my friends and I got word that Notre Dame (all male at the time) planned one of the very first computer dating events. We didn’t think “dehumanization,” but rather “opportunity” with a capital “O.” I told my friends that computer dating meant no more lonely Saturday nights. My sister had clued me in to the potential of computers ... the genesis of match.com
On weekend nights at Barat, we actually played board games (Scrabble or Monopoly) and some kid named Colleen played the guitar while the rest of us sang "Kumbaya" and "I'm Leavin' on a Jet Plane." There was no pizza delivery, just one telephone per dormitory floor, and the nuns locked up the milk machine until morning (yep, milk), but we did have a 10-cent Coke machine in the basement (no snacks). I rarely had the dime for Coke, so I used to pilfer 2 teabags each morning for my evening refreshment and a few sugar packets. The good news was that we had "lights out" at midnight on Friday and Saturday, otherwise it was 10 p.m.
I had 3 dates that year (the main reason I transferred to a Washington, DC, college in 1965). I am not lying ... 3 dates. Even I can't believe it!
Anyway, back to the Notre Dame Computer dance. We had to fill out questionnaires regarding our interests, etc. (I lied about a few things, but I think everyone did). The nuns hired some Trailways buses and scores of sweet young things boarded the bus holding our computer punch cards delicately, since we’d been warned not to “fold, spindle, or mutilate” them. I still have no clue how to “spindle” a punch card. The nuns fluttered about us like nervous moms.
It took a couple of hours to drive to South Bend, Indiana, for the dance, which was held in ND's huge gymnasium. There must have been 75 priest chaperoning. They surrounded the basketball court (I mean the dance floor). There were roaming priests to check the distance between "dancers' bodies. Believe me, they really did this. They'd tap the young man on the shoulder if he was "over the line." They'd have had a field day today (or a stroke).
At first it took forever to find one's “match.” The "Matches" were all decked out in plaid sports coats and navy blue ties. We young ladies had low heeled shoes in case we happened to be matched with a short guy . We wore Villager or Ladybug-brand sweaters and matching skirt sets.
Regretfully, the mini-skirt appeared on Catholic campuses my junior year.
Upon meeting one's match, it took about 30 minutes to ditch them and find someone more appealing. I don't know of a single match that worked out. Today, it would probably take half the time. Those of us who graduated in 1968 were socially handicapped. We caught up around age 48.
Decades have passed since the grand event, and a couple of years ago I was reminiscing about horrific dating experiences when, to my great surprise, a longtime friend volunteered that she, too, was at the same dance. She was bused over from St. Mary’s College in South Bend. She had one word to describe it to her husband and mine … “excruciating.”
I reminded her that we Barat girls got a bit more attention than the St. Mary's girls ... after all, we were not locals. Naturally, we got more attention. Still, after the Barat Trailways departed for Lake Forest, the St. Mary's girls got all the dates for the rest of the year.