Sherwin had the nintendo down the street and during the summer my brother would go to his house. He tried to dissuade my tagging along but it’s how I do. I had to go play the nintendo. For this nintendo came with duck hunt, slightly more tantalizing to me than super mario brothers as I almost never got beyond the water level.

Word had spread quickly on this machine, the nintendo, and of course, my brother and I wanted it for ourselves. So, on Christmas morning of I don’t know what year but a year in which we were both probably too old to play nintendo, but alarmingly, too dim-witted at the time to specify should our folks actually pick up on the clues we had (honestly) never really laid out, we received an ATARI. Caught up in the moment of absolute, true, pure, genuine childhood Christmas surprise, my brother (he initiated it, NOT ME) screamed, throwing his hand into the air, inviting my hand to meet his in a real life high-five.

Now, we appreciated our ATARI, but again, it isn’t a nintendo. We agreed that it would be hooked up to the 13 inch television in his room and that it would be OURS. It was OURS. All of it. And the three games that came free with it: Food Fight, Pole Position, and Karatika. Because, to be clear, it was not a Nintendo and therefore not worthy of begging our mom to go out to Toys R Us and buy more cartridges. Nor was this ATARI worthy of more chores for new games. It simply was not a nintendo. So, we got really good at those games.

Foolishly, when were were ‘done’ with the ATARI, our mother asked us what we would have her do with it. We didn’t know. We didn’t care. And she bubble wrapped the shit out of it and I can only guess that she balakbayan’d the shit out of that and sent it to Cebu where our cousins most likely laughed their asses off while they played a new thing called SEGA.

This delayed response to technology has plagued our household for decades. Once, when our mom got a new thing called a Video Rental Card, we discovered the harshness of our tech existence. It was a Friday and the drill during lent is as follows: McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish Fridays. Dinner done. With that, mom took us to a video store across the road. We had noticed that the last time we tried to check movies out, the video cartridge we borrowed was longer and thinner. WTF. So we asked up front and they pointed us to a tiny, minuscule, hidden bin near the back of the store and said, “Those are the only Betas we carry. Sorry.” We might as well have been a fuckin’ Canadian family at this point. Beta.

You know I could go on. You know that giant 65 inch television we have in our living room? Yeah, well, mom got that on sale. Like crazy cheap. We thought we were a Royal family with that shit. Till this day, no one mentions the very real possibility that the real reason Best Buy tried to push that shit on us was to make room for a thing called a Flat Screen. 

My love for technology is only eclipsed by my hatred for it.