The Elusive Enter Key
My bonding with the ‘Enter’ key over the years
When I was a kid, the summer vacation meant playing out all day and coming back home tired and exhausted. Though it was a holiday, we work up early everyday to spend more time outdoors before the sun blazed its way. Our parents made us take breaks often and pampered us with juices and iced teas. That day, the sun was scorching hot, and we ran to my friend’s home earlier than usual. Her mom surprised us by handing us a glass of Rasna (soft drink concentrate, a favourite amongst 90s Indian kids). We sipped it slowly, so as to not drink too much, as we wanted the taste to linger on for long. That was when we chanced upon the computer at their home. Computers were still a rarity then, used only in schools and we looked upon it in wonder. After we reluctantly completed the juice, my friend powered it on to show us the games she played. Everything about the machine amazed us — the huge screen, the large CPU, the tiny mouse, and the keyboard. We were in awe of the cartoon figures on the screen that jumped and walked to the commands my friend gave through the keys. My gaze followed her hands as she punched the keys, when I noticed the large key with an inverted ‘L’ shape. It had the word ‘Enter’ written on it. I got an instant liking to it. I noticed that my friend used it to make the characters jump. Since then, every day we took some time off from playing to explore the video games. I vividly remember the game, Disney’s Aladdin, where the player had to face hurdles as he progressed. The Enter Key seemed to attract me and I eagerly took control of it every time, bestowed with the responsibility of making the character jump. More than the game, it was pressing the key that excited me more.
Fast forward a few years, I was taking computer classes in my school and found the actual usage of my favourite ‘Enter Key’ — moving to a new line, alternate to using the mouse to press ‘OK’ in dialog boxes. We learned, ‘Q Basic’, my first tryst with a programming language. That was also the first time they introduced us to the Internet and emails. The next time when my father went to the internet cafe to send a business mail, I proudly accompanied him, claiming to help him. In the middle of composing mail, I pressed the enter key to move the cursor down. To my horror, I had sent the mail even before completing it. That was when I realised that pressing ‘enter key’ automatically sent emails. ‘Lesson learned: A little knowledge is always dangerous.’
As I grew up, computers continued to be my fascination, and I took up computer science engineering for under graduation. Thus began lab work and programming became regular. As the final year approached, everyone of us were nervous as we sat for our placements. The programming round was on and after some struggle and moments of panic, I completed my coding and testing. With a quivering voice, I called the interviewer who examined my program and the tested cases. When I was about to heave a sigh of relief, he gave me a different set of inputs. I was not sure whether it would get processed. As I typed the values and pressed the ‘Enter Key’, my heartbeat rose not knowing what to expect. That was the one time I dreaded pressing the key. Fortunately, it ran successfully, giving the expected output.
Eventually, I got placed as a developer, and coding has now become an everyday affair. I keep pressing the enter key several times, every day without realising it — be it for typing the program, or sending a reply. The size of the key has reduced and its shape has changed from the inverted ‘L’ to a flat rectangle and my excitement about it has also ceased.
But life does not end here. It is all about finding the next spark — an excitement, a purpose that keeps us going.
“If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story.” But we do not want an ending anytime soon, do we?
