Around the sun again

Delighting in an old memory.

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This Wednesday, the oldest boy in our house got a little older. The seven-year-old I au-pair turned eight, and we did lots of celebrating. I baked a truly massive chocolate cake, topped with melted chocolate and Haribo gummy-bears. There were more presents than he could count waiting for him on the living room coffee table. Later today, the house will be filled with no less than ten children, running around and no doubt exploring all of his new gifts. All the excitement reminded me of my eighth birthday.

I can’t remember much about what time I woke up or which pyjamas I wore or what kind of cake I had—it has been sixteen years. I do remember my present. Every year, my parents would hide my birthday present and make a treasure hunt out of finding it. I’ve found gifts in the freezer, hanging from the roof of our garage, and duct-taped to the underside of our dining-room table. My dad is a very creative hider. The tradition was not exclusive of my childhood birthdays, either. They hid my present every year until my twenty-third birthday (I moved out after that, and have yet to visit Cape Town again). The hiding of my present, then, though exciting, was not out of the ordinary, and is not the reason I so clearly remember my present. It was 2007. I was in Grade 2. My best friend in school was a boy named James. I loved visiting his house; we always played boxing and fencing on Wii Sports; we held competitions, comparing who could jump into the pool in the most creative way; we often watched way more TV than I did at home. What James loved most of all, though, was his Nintendo DS. Without fail, it was the most intriguing thing in his house. The DS was a handheld gaming system, and though I had inherited my uncle’s Game Boy Colour from the late nineties, it left something to be desired when compared to James’s DS.

As a child, I would make it very clear to my parents what I wanted for my birthday. I see it with my au-pair kids, too. With practically every turn of the page of the LEGO catalogue, I hear, “Das wünsche ich mir zu meinem Geburtstag!” (I want that for my birthday!) For my eighth birthday I did the same. I knew that James’s family were better off than we were—their house was huge, he always had a new video game when I visited his house, his dad even had a separate room for his model racetrack (Scalextric, I think it was). Though I loved playing with James’s DS, I knew there were lots of things he had that I didn’t, and I reckoned that the DS was just one of those things. I asked for a nicer, newer Game Boy, instead. That would, at least, be more comparable than the decade old one I had.

So, come the big day, I was expecting to find a Game Boy. We do the treasure hunt, and after twenty minutes of searching, I get my hands on it. It was a big box. Much bigger than a Game Boy… I ripped the wrapping paper off to reveal a plastic VHS case. A VHS? It was The Little Mermaid 2. One corner of the VHS’s protective plastic cover was ripped, revealing the movie’s paper artwork. I really vividly remember that ripped corner. I thought that my parents had not only failed to deliver on my request for a Game Boy, but when buying me a movie instead, only managed to get a second hand one! My parents and I were in their bedroom when I had opened my present. I said thanks, left the tape on their bed, then slipped away to the lounge and turned on the TV. I was heartbroken. I had worried that wishing for what I really wanted—a Nintendo DS like James’s—would have been too much to ask for, and that I would have been disappointed with any other gift. I had purposefully lowered the bar to avoid that outcome. As I watched the infomercials that ran before the cartoons on the weekends, my parents called from the bedroom. Didn’t I want to watch the movie? I said I wasn’t in the mood, that I’d watch my normal cartoons. They called again and again, but my mom had to come into the lounge to get my attention. “Why don’t you open the box, at least?” I went back to the bedroom with her and sat on their bed. I wore a big, sulky frown. I peered at that rip again, it was so big that I could see inside the box. Something was inside it, but it wasn’t a VHS. My interest reinvigorated, I opened the box, and out fell a brand new, shiny, white, Nintendo DS.

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I’m facing lots of VHS’s in my life at the moment. Some of the boxes are certainly tattered. I wonder if any of them have got something unexpected waiting inside…

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My granny alway stole my DS to play sudoku on it, and she never charged the battery afterwards! If you enjoyed this journal, please share it with some you love.