WRITING PROMPT #4

When We Were Wee

There's so much that the word "childhood" brings to mind. Childhood is imaginary friends and skinned knees, climbing trees and going on adventures to places the grown ups can't understand, yet you've never left your backyard. It's a time when the worst thing you have to worry about is whether or not you're invited to so and so's birthday party, and when all the hurts of the world could be fixed by a kiss from mom and a cookie. The possibilities for life seemed endless, limited only by one's imagination. Any hobby seemed like not only a potential future career, but you'd dream of being the best in the world at it. (I played piano, so I thought I'd be the world's greatest concert pianist. I've written since stories since I was 3 years old, no lie, and thought I'd have bestselling books published that would make me rich someday. I thought I'd go to art school and become a world-renowned artist. I also thought I'd be a doctor, a horse rancher, a gymnast, a ballerina, and a rockstar.) You feel no guilt about doing anything but playing with toys or coloring all day. At some point, we lose sight of such things when a pesky little thing called "reality" sets in. You realize you could've been doing something productive with your time. You find you have to settle for something that is possible where careers are concerned, even if to you, it's the equivalent of selling your soul. (Can you tell I'm still bitter about my art dream dying?)

However, this is not how I intended on this post going. Looking it over, I just said "WOW. That's way too much bitterness about what's supposed to be such a happy time. Let's fix that." So, I'm going to veer this in a completely different direction. I can't promise that it will be a meaningful, introspective post; just that it won't be so damn pessimistic.

Back in about 1996 or 1997, the digital pet craze hit. Oh, did it ever hit. I'm normally not a person who ever follows trends, as they strike me as mindless and conformist, but this one was a little different and I couldn't resist. All it took as my seeing one Tamagotchi on the last day of school in 6th grade, and I HAD to have one. This was when I was still in private school, and this girl's father was an international businessman who always seemed to pick up the latest and greatest new toys before they got big over here. Normally I wouldn't give a rat's ass, but with how I and electronics are........ all it took was my eyes locking on that little egg-shaped keychain with the three buttons, andi t was love. However, try as he might, my own dad turned up empty-handed when I asked him for one.

About a month or so into the summer, I was talking to one of my cousins on the phone (as I did every day with her, since she was pretty much my only friend growing up) and I kept hearing this beeping in the background. I finally asked her what it was. "Oh that? That's my Gigapet Kitty!" "Your what?" "It's this little virtual cat that you play with and raise from a kitten and watch it grow up!" "...Is it on a keychain by any chance?" "Yeah, why?" "Does it have 3 little buttons at the bottom?" "Mine has 4." ".................Is this like one of those Tamagotchi things?" "Yeah!! KB Toys is selling them!"

DAAAAAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

He'd barely even gotten in the door from work by the time I was dragging his ass out that door in search of the elusive GigaKitty. (Unfortunately, to be fair, we had to take Nicole too. Laaaame.) So the first store we went to was wiped out and didn't have a single one there. Okay, to the mall!! We checked every toy store in that damn mall, and they were all sold out too. Not to be deterred (since god knows when I was still that young, I usually got whatever I wanted....I should really lay off Kimmy for being just as bad now that she's that age and acts the same exact way), I made my dad go to Toys R Us.

.......We stopped at 3 different Toys R Us stores, none of which had them in stock either. My dad was about to give up for the night, and out came the pouty lip and the puppy dog eyes with the threat of impending tears... "Okay. We'll try one more store, but then we're going home."

I honestly couldn't even tell you what store it was anymore, but it was some tiny little hole in the wall place. I remember groaning as we pulled into the parking lot. "But dad! This place is TINY! They'll never have them here!" "Well, if you don't want to go in, we can turn around and go ho--" "I'll go in." "Okay then."

So we go inside, and this place is little more than about three racks of stuff, and a wall of shelves behind the register. I was midway through asking if they had any Gigapets or Tamagotchis (skeptically at that, since I never figured this rinkydink little place would have them) when my eyes locked on a little green egg-shaped keychain on the wall, with the little three buttons at the bottom......

"We're all out of Gigapets and Tamagotchis, but we have these Nano Puppies!"

"I'LL TAKE IT!"

I got the green one, my sister got the orange one. All was well in the world. The entire car-ride home, all I could think about was how incredibly cool this thing was, and was practically pawing at it through the plastic, as I couldn't open it without scissors. Never would one thing that some simple little black and white pixels on maybe an inch tall screen could make a kid so excited. I got home and read every word of the instruction manual while I ate dinner. And then proceeded to stay up until about 2 in the morning playing with this new acquisition while watching Bumpety Boo cartoons with my little brother.

I thought I was such hot shit with my new toy. Even if it did keep beeping every half hour all night, wanting to be played with... Unlike Tamagotchis, Nanos didn't have a pause button. Or a sleep mode. Sure, they slept...but not for very long. But that didn't bother me any. Anyhow, within 24 hours, we go over to show off our new toys to the neighbors' kids. (More or less to do a "look what we have that you don't!", I have to admit. Kids are cruel.) They, on the other hand, just got a new pool. And you can see where this is going already. My sister could put hers down long enough to go in, so she wore it around her neck on a chain. Leant over once.....bye-bye, puppy. She drowned it. Literally. That thing was fried. Being the mean little kid I was, I laughed and wouldn't let her anywhere near mine, because DUH, she'd kill mine too! Did she get a replacement? No.

Is karma a bitch? Yes.

The day after that, my aunt took me out for lunch at Carl's Jr (why I still remember this, I don't know). No sooner had I set my Pepsi down in the car did we drive over a bump that made it spill all over my lap.....and all over the Nano Puppy. FFFFUUUUUUU-- So here I am, trying to dry it off as fast as possible, shake it out, ANYTHING to avoid it dying a similar fate my sister's had. (I may have given it a feeble attempt at mouth to mouth, because I was a stupid child.) And mine still worked, sure.... But forever had a dark cola stain inside the screen I was never able to do anything about. I'd always get asked if I broke the screen. "No. My puppy got a pepsi tattoo."

That craze encompassed a couple of years, and between my siblings and my cousins, we amassed countless Nanos, Gigapets, Tamagotchis, 8-In-One pets, Disney pets, Avon pets, Digi-Panda, Digi-Fish, Dinkie Dinos, Yuki Penguins, you name it, we had it. I had quite an obsession with them, and I would always offer to "babysit" them (which would consist of me clipping them onto my purse and pretending they were mine). If someone pissed me off while I was babysitting theirs......someone would just accidentally hit the reset button on them. >_> (Thus why I never let anyone babysit mine but my mom.)  Slowly my cousins and my siblings outgrew these, and rather than throw them out, knowing I was all obsessed with the damn things, would typically offer them to me. Of course, I'd take them.

I kid you not. I ended up with over 70 of the damn things. All functional, all active, all being played, all being carried everywhere.

I was soon carrying old lady purses so there was enough clips and strap room to attach them all. The arm strap of my purse alone would have about 20 pets clipped onto it. It looked ridiculous, and you could probably of called me the digital equivalent to a crazy cat lady (well, I had cats in there, too!). I was a digital pet hoarder.

I've been the butt of many jokes for still owning them, although they haven't been touched or even really thought about for about the past decade. They've been sitting in shoeboxes, collecting dust. Hopefully I took the batteries out so they didn't corrode. Regardless, something randomly spurred me a few weeks ago to search ebay what some of these might be worth now.

Holy crap. Even out of the package, a LOT of these can go for about $40 a pop. SERIOUSLY?? And if they were in the cases, they go for well over a hundred bucks. Fffffuuuuu....... wow. As soon as I can find what the hell I did with them again, someone's going to make a killing on ebay, no doubt. And yet, when I thought about it, I realized there's still one that even though I'll probably never play it again, I doubt I can bring myself to give it up. You know what it is?

That little green Nano puppy with the pepsi tattoo.