The Day I Was “Rescued” by Firefighters While Learning to Code
Photo by I guess I must be going through a nostalgic spree or something, because yesterday, as I wrote about keyboards and my experience with Linux — and even the project I’ve been working on, trying to write a few words every night — is also part of a memory from my childhood. And today, I find myself thinking of the day when I had to be, quote-unquote, rescued by the firemen after being stuck in a hotel room once.
It all started when I was about eleven years old. My parents surprised me with a microcomputer — a TK90X, which was basically a knockoff of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum — and I was completely mesmerized. Back then, computers had almost no memory, no monitors, no mice, and you had to connect them to a TV. My dad, who competed professionally in endurance motorcycle events, brought me along on one of his trips to a neighboring state in Brazil. I don’t recall where my two sisters were, only that they’d brought me along.
At the hotel, they gifted me the computer and helped me hook it up to the room’s TV before heading out for the day. Their instructions were simple: stay in the room and don’t go anywhere until they returned. That was perfectly fine with me and I was completely engrossed, flipping through the manual and trying to understand how to use the computer. It was the first time I had ever seen one in my life.
Toward the end of the book, there was an index of simple BASIC programs you could type in yourself to see what the machine could do. I started coding one of them, completely lost in concentration, when I heard a knock at the door. It was room service. I shouted that they could come in, but they said the door was locked and asked me to open it. I tried, but it wouldn’t budge. So I shrugged, told them I couldn’t, and went back to typing.
The knocking continued. Then the phone started ringing. The hotel staff thought I was panicking and called to reassure me that help was on the way — even though, in truth, I was perfectly content. I had my computer, my code, and peace and quiet. What else could I need? In my mind, I was thinking, Who said I want to get out? Just leave me alone so I can finish my program!
Eventually, they told me over the phone to unlock the window facing the street. I did as they asked and went back to my desk. A few minutes later, I heard a strange tapping sound. When I turned, I saw a firefighter rappelling down the side of the building. He climbed through the window, checked that I was okay, and quickly got the jammed door open. Moments later, the room was flooded with hotel staff, all celebrating their heroic “rescue.” Meanwhile, I was just standing there, confused about all the fuss — all I wanted was to keep coding.
The program I’d been working on drew a colorful, pixelated rendering of Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf Mountain. It was the first time I’d ever seen a computer do something I had told it to do — a true lightbulb moment. I left the computer running, knowing that turning it off would erase everything without a cassette tape to save it. When my parents returned and heard what had happened, they were understandably alarmed. But for me, it was just another quiet day that ended with a revelation: I wanted computers to be part of my life forever.
As I grew older, I didn’t immediately pursue programming as a career — it remained more of a hobby for years — but that moment in the hotel room, being “rescued” by a fireman while lost in the wonder of code, still feels like the spark that started it all.