6/6: Open Game Thread, Part 2

I remember this one time when I was three. My mother had taken me to the store to by the coolest new GI Joe action figure. All the kids wanted it. All the kids had it. My parents looked at the price tag – a whopping $6.95. Less than 7 dollars to have a toy that all the kids wanted and all the kids had. They looked at that price and they said no. They said that even though they may a combined 100 thousand dollars a year, they couldn’t buy me this one toy. This one, small, stupid little sub 7.00 toy.

It was unfair. As I grew older, I grew to need that toy. I think that’s when the neediness started. At first I would look to other people to see if they were willing to buy me that toy. All the kids had it, remember, and even though by then it had gotten old, I would grab hold of the nearest adult pant leg and see if they were willing to be more sharing, more open.

As I got older, i kept having these needy feelings. I would look towards baseball websites to see if there was just one poster that would take two seconds out of their day to rec me. Like my parents, the posters had unlimited numbers of recs, and the time it would take to click the rec button would be less than a few moments – arguably equal to the amount of dollars it would have cost to buy me that one stupid GI Joe toy. I know it was weird of me, but they really let me down. It drastically changed how my life felt from that on. I became a different person. I know I was 3. I know anything could have happened. But that toy was important. That toy mattered. I still don’t know who I would be today if it wasn’t for that single instant. Maybe the same person, maybe someone different. But if it were not for that one toy, I know that – at least for a little while – my life would have been drastically different.