Obsessed with all things electronic, a subscriber to Popular Electronics, crafter of circuits with my soldering iron and parts sourced from the local Radio Shack, I continued the pursuit of my life's dream.  I'm not sure what that dream actually was, but I think involved the construction of a working phaser.  Anyway, my weekly trips to Radio Shack to spend hours browsing the solid state parts section eventually led me to discover this sometime in 1978:

At $600 in 1978 dollars, roughly a month of my parents' salary in an era when my mom only worked every other week due to the poor economy, there was no way I was getting one of my own.  What they did buy me, though, was the manual, which I still have to this day:

I would argue this is still one of the best introductions to programming ever written, especially from the perspective of inspiring young boys.  I spent hours and hours hanging out in the local Radio Shack, writing BASIC programs on paper at home and typing them in at the store.  And thus was born my first game, Tic Tac Toe - complete with AI.