Nostalgia

I did quite a bit of cleaning and rearranging this afternoon; I spent about six hours cleaning, with a few intermittent breaks here and there. Come July, we'll have lived here for six years, and in all that time, we still haven't properly unpacked.

We live in a three bedroom house, and one of the bedrooms is used as strictly a storage room. There are boxes everywhere. And then there are even more boxes down in the laundry room which is in the basement. Today, I spent time condensing the boxes and throwing away a lot of garbage and stuff that's been damaged and what not over the years.

During the day today, I found a lot of old stuff from my childhood that I've been searching for for quite some time. I finally found my old Gameboy and a few games. It was buried beneath a ton of junk at the bottom of a box that was also buried behind more boxes. No wonder I hadn't found it in so long.

I removed it from the haphazard mess and examined it with beaming pride and nostalgia. I wiped a thick layer of dust from the screen that had collected over the years. Honestly, how the hell does dust find its way all the way to the bottom of a box?

Pokemon Red was still in the cartridge slot from whenever the hell I played it last. I flicked the on-switch hoping it would play, but it obviously did not. The batteries have long since failed.

The big kid in me put down the Gameboy and continued to rummage through the chaotic remnants from a time in my life I had long forgotten. I found several old report cards from grade school. I even found some old report cards from when my dad was in grade school. I made sure I saved all of those.

As I continued to dig, I came across an adapter to plug my Gameboy into the wall.

NO BATTERIES REQUIRED.

I eagerly turned on the Gameboy to hear the familiar *ding* of the Nintendo logo. I adjusted the old contrast wheel to get a picture, only to find that the logo was scrambled and the game had frozen.

ANGRY FACE!

I switched off the Gameboy and removed the cartridge and blew into the cartridge slot, only to have more dust cloud into my face!

Seriously... how the hell does dust find its way into such tight places?

After finally getting the game to work, I began playing the file I had abandoned so long ago. I wish there was a date on the save option so I could see the year. Memories came rushing back as I played through a few areas. I spent so much time as a kid playing that damn thing.

After about five minutes I become bored with it. Seriously, I don't understand how I was so captivated by that game as a child. By today's standards, I guess, it just hasn't aged well.

So here I am, typing this at exactly 11:11 PM, feeling all nostalgic and sneezing my head off from all the dust I breathed in today.

I may have looked to the past a lot today, but all my attention has yet again been focused on the future.

Nine more days...