I was the peculiar sort of child that stressed about keeping his toys as close to mint condition as possible, especially video games. Delicately sliding game discs out of their zipper binder, ultra-aware of the risk of leaving even a hint of a smudge on the pearlescent underside. Four, evenly-spaced fingers perfectly distribute pressure across the disc for a crisp, simultaneous click as the mount’s metal clasps yield and clutch its center firmly in place.
If you think that’s obnoxiously particular, don’t ask my wife about how I prefer to distribute the eggs in the carton. This was just the first of a series of rituals that I liked to conduct before I even got to begin playing my original PlayStation.
Judge all you want. All I know is that my parents kept trusting me with new video games and electronics while my brother got my older consoles, games, and MP3 players for holiday and birthday gifts (yes, in their original box, how did you know?), none the wiser that they’d been used before. Naturally, after the first week or so they looked like he’d chained them to a car bumper and dragged them down a gravel road, despite having the sturdiest cases money could buy protecting those poor devices from him.
Fast forward a lot of years and I find myself a parent with a daughter highly curious about video games … and perhaps not as curious as she could be about keeping her things nice.
Her budding Pokemon obsession presented itself as a shining moment for me to remain relevant in her life. In short order, a red Nintendo 3DS XL and Omega Ruby time traveled straight from 2014 to our dining room table. An excellent way to cut your teeth on gaming, combining the perfect blend of a big enough screen, engaging graphics, and enough structure to guarantee progress for a curious yet clueless child. Look, it isn’t competing with technology and general gaming in 2025, but the open-world games are just too much for her to wrap her head around right now.
Chuffed as I was for my collection of pristine gaming equipment to come into use as a dad (everyone’s got that box of junk that’ll come into use one day, you know the feeling!), I was blinded to the obvious truth: We have grossly different philosophies when it comes to caring for our belongings. It wasn’t long before she cleared the air for me.
Within minutes we had the first significant blow to my childhood self: an abrupt drop while she was playing on the couch that snapped the lid closed. I heard it from across the house and had long-forgotten memories thrust into my brain of my brother’s abuse of electronics. What had I done?
After several more incidents like this across a handful weeks, there was little left of me, or at least the part of me that clung to the idea of keeping this little piece of history perfect.
The final straw was just this past weekend. I warned her about keeping the stylus tucked into the designated port under the DS, safe, secure, ever-ready. Alas, what does a dad know about anything? Practically foretelling its fate, it was only well after we had scanned out boarding passes and were almost on the airplane that she noticed it was missing, likely cold and alone on the thin carpet of Ottawa’s Macdonald–Cartier International Airport. Fifteen years that three inch, plastic rod accompanied me on innumerable adventures, only to be left forgotten and trod upon by the feet of strangers.
I had no choice — I sighed, losing whatever was left of that part of me and moved on.
Sitting in my seat I did some mental cost-benefit analysis. Is it worth it to keep on giving pieces of me away to this kid? Yes, yes it is. The squeals of delight as she catches and nicknames her new little friends, the sharing of knowledge and time together on the couch, watching her think through each of the battles like a little Napoleon at her own Austerlitz. Being able to share a piece of my childhood with my daughter is always worth it, especially when it looks differently than how I envisioned it.
If you find yourself in that airport with a little stylus from the gaming years of yore, I hope it brings you the same joy it has brought me.
Brendan Bogues-Schroeder is a former teacher. He lives with his wife, daughter, and an entirely too large puppy in Rochester.
