I also exploited the living shit out of my high school’s fast connection and a friend’s Zip drive. Pretty sure they had a T1 and the only reason it was so fast was basically because teachers were only using it for email.
I couldn’t manage to convince my parents that I had piss poor vision until I was 8 years old. When I finally managed to get them to take me to the eye doctor and get prescription glasses, my mom apologized to me repeatedly for like 2 weeks.
That something crazy just happened, and maybe they should care. I’m still not sure what was going on in their heads in those moments; it was a repeating theme.