October 10, 2010: I turned in the draft of my book, so I can no longer use examples for it.

I would like to include a few personal stories of enchantment in my next book. I am looking for examples of how people, products, services, organizations, ideas, or causes swept you off your feet.

Specs:

  • Written from your personal experience, not an external, academic view.

  • 150-200 words

  • Ideally, all the basics would be in your essay: who, what, when, why, and how.

As an example, here is how something enchanted me:

The second most enchanting moment of my life occurred in 1983 when Mike Boich showed me a Macintosh prototype. (The most enchanting moment was meeting my wife.) This life-changing event happened in back of a non-descript building on Bandley Drive in Cupertino, California. Boich was the software evangelist of the Macintosh Division of Apple.

Back then, personal computing was very different. The best case was text on a screen, and if you were lucky, your computer (if you had a computer) displayed upper and lower-case text, and you moved around the screen with cursor keys. Seeing Macintosh for the first time was an epiphany and transformational moment. It removed the scales from my eyes, parted the clouds, and I thought I heard angels singing.