Sunday, June 5, 2011

Goodbye to a Good Friend

I was digging through my drawers today; the ones for storing things in my closet, not the ones for storing my legs and hips; and I found one of dearest old friends.  His name was clearly inscribed across his chest, 

GAME BOY pocket

Ah, my first handheld gaming system.  First, that is if, you do not count all of the other handheld-sized toys that I had and were used to play games.  Moronic misinterpretations of the term "handheld gaming system" aside, my game boy and I were a common duo in the late 1990s.  This game boy helped me deepen my love for The Legend of Zelda and taught me just how hard it is to catch'em all.  

My parents purchased this game boy for me as a Christmas present.  It was the kind of gift that a young man was so eager to have that he would sneak into the closet that hid the Christmas presents, smuggle it out of the house, play with it at school, and craftily return it to its spot in the closet before his parents came home.  It was purchased as a used device, so I know I was not the first to love this game boy, but I learned today that I mayforever be the last to love the device.

I found the device just as I had left it: two slight cracks in the translucent casing below the screen, but in good shape, otherwise.  I went to switch the power on, and found there was no response.  I searched the house for AAA batteries.  I found no fresh batteries, and soon surmised that this was because only one other device in my home even uses AAA batteries (a remote control for a DVD player).  I cannibalized these batteries and went to use them to breathe new life into my old pal.

This is where I discovered that the last cartridge my game boy and I would enjoy together was already in the distant past.  The batteries in my device had passed their healthy shelf life years ago, 2009 to be exact (oh, how 2009 must have seemed like a distant dream when I first popped them into the game boy).  Expired batteries have the potential to create a large amount of corrosion, and these batteries were living up to every bit of potential they ever had.  I desperately pried the dead batteries out of my friend, scraped away the corrosion, and worriedly inserted the new batteries.  Nothing.  He was gone.

"CONTRAST!" I screamed to myself.  "For no good reason at all, the GAME BOY pocket was equipped with a contrast adjustment wheel!  If I adjust the contrast then I will see....nothing.  Nothing at all."  The brief, bright light of a second chance was quickly snuffed out and became a second chasm of gloom.

My friend's life has been taken away.  What hurts me the most is that it was my own neglect that lead to this and that I have no way of knowing how long this good chum of mind sat dead and gone in my closet.  Dead and gone with me passing by every day, not even knowing he had left us.

I don't exactly know what to do with the empty shell that now sits on my desk.  So, I have decided to print out this post, fold it, and place it in the now empty cartridge slot of my game boy.  I will leave him sitting somewhere in a public place and hope that fate will bring him and my message to a soul that has the strength to dispose of him in a dignified way for me, for the game boy is too close to me for me to ever see it discarded in the trash and it is far to environmentally irresponsible for me to give it a proper burial.

And perhaps, in some Utopian time far from now, the kind soul that finds my friend and my goodbye letter to him will be able to bring him back from beyond the silicon gates of game boy heaven and allow him to once more bring joy into the world of ours, here, on this good Earth.