Mother’s day went smoothly. I had breakfast with my parents at this nice little restaurant they often go to. The food is always good, but they like it because they can sit outside and eat. Sometimes they will bring Molly, one of my mother’s two miniature long-hair dachshunds. Molly seems to love it and a few other people bring their dogs from time to time.
After breakfast we walked over to the CVS store – they like to walk after eating breakfast, me, I like to take a nap! Inside the store I picked up toothpaste and a couple of magazines, one of which was the official Xbox mag. I am going to send the Xbox magazine along with two comic books I bought at Borders earlier in the week to my boys.
Anyway – as I was paying the young girl at the register saw the Xbox mag and commented, in a nice casual way, that she liked the PS2 better. I said that it was a very good console too. She then went on to recount how she loved to play Mario on the ‘old’ Nintendo when she was ‘younger’. Now, as I get older I find it harder to guess the age of anyone under 20, but I was thinking she was born around the time I bought my last pair of really good dress shoes. I nodded knowingly and said, “Yea that was a good one” and in the spirit of sharing childhood gaming memories I asked if she ever played the Atari 2600. With that question a blank looked washed over her face. Like a student in history class being asked to recall what defined the Bronze Age.
I saw, in her eyes, the search for the memory. I could almost see her going back in time: Xbox, Playstation2, Playstation, Nintendo 64, NES, color TV, Apollo space missions, HiFi audio…
“I’ve heard of it.” She said.
And with those few words my bones began to ache. I was old.
No, just older.
I had bought my mother 4 plumbagos and two bags of soil to plant behind the lanai (she had been saying she wanted to rip up what was there and replace it with the plumbagos). I also got her the first season of the Mary Tyler Moore show to watch while I did the digging, ripping and planting. Everything went smoothly. Ripping up on of the bougainvilleas was kind of a pain – it seemed like its roots were holding onto the foundation. But, a little elbow grease and some cursing and it was a done deal. I planted the plumbagos with plenty of bagged soil and gave them as much water as I could. Three of the four don’t look like they took the replanting very well, but I’ll keep watch over them for the next week or so. It was a good time working with my mother like that. I just hope my gift doesn’t die on her.