Yea, we've got it so easy today. These kids have no idea :-P

But seriously, I'm sorry that sucks. I happened to be lucky enough with an uncle-in-law's dad being an EE and just literally gave me a bunch of 6502 development stuff (by that time it was reasonably dated and he had retired). I also got lucky to live in a place where the libraries has tech and programming books that were pretty decent. Had those two things not been there, it would have been a very different story.

I try to pay that forward any way I can by taking part in the local tech/invention/science fair thing. Hopefully to be there to show youngsters how wonderful and interesting tech can be.