Selling a Memory...

Today I sold a memory for $50. And I only had the slightest of guilty pangs about it. The item I sold was an early 1980's video game console called the Magnavox Odyssey 2 gaming console. It was the direct competitor to the Atari game console and in many ways, the Beta Max to the Atari's VHS. It was never a big seller, nor very popular, but like Beta tapes and the players, was better in quality and durability than VHS. I remember getting our Odyssey game as a Christmas gift from my parents. My uncle Bob was a Magnavox salesman and he got a good deal for them, but I shiver when I think how much they had to pay for it at the time. (More proof that either my parents really loved my younger brother and I or that we were really spoiled)
Anyway, we played the crap out of that game and obtained all kinds of game cartridges for it. The cartridges were these huge 4x3 inch cases that looked more like a Sci-Fi component than anything else, and it plugged into this large, sleek, silver and black keyboard that looked like something off of Star Trek. I loved it! It was so much cooler looking than the simple Atari box with it's single red button. I knew of only one other kid who had the Odyssey game so trading games was kind of tough. Everyone else had Atari!
This game console provided us with countless hours of fun at our house. Our friends would come over and we would spend hours in my room playing it. (I had a 13" color TV that I bought!) We especially loved playing it when the snow was so deep we had no school and it was so cold no amount of clothing was going to keep us warm....
That sparks another memory if I might be allowed to digress a bit... During those cold winter days of gaming on the Odyssey, I remember how often my friends would come over but they always had to keep their winter coats on while in the upstairs of my parents house. You see, there was no direct heat upstairs other than a really, really inefficient space heater. Temps during the winter rarely got above 55 degrees in the 2nd floor of the house, so a coat was a neccesity. Maybe that is the reason I like to have my own home so cool in the winter. I can attribute it to my formative years. My wife would attribute it to me being cheap and unwilling to pay for a heating bill! But anyway, on with the sale of a memory....
We would play the games, laughing, yelling, cursing, and hitting each other for hours at time. (Yes, I said hitting. It was a primitive form of affection where I came from, much like calling each other *only* by their last names.) These games, looking back at them now, are so simplistic compared to the games on XBOX or Playstation. But you know what, they were fun. And at times, very challenging! Alot of great memories were hooked up to that game.
I broke the old Odyssey game out a few years ago and hooked it up and decided to play it for a while. It still worked as it always did and the familiar and endearing "buulureep!" noise it made when you pressed start was like hearing from an old friend again. I showed my XBOX partner, (my son) the game and at first he was skeptical that an 8 bit video image game could be fun, but he was surprised at how fun it really was. He played a number of the games and liked them, but in the end, XBOX graphics and challenges had spoiled him for more modern fare. But at least he tried it!
The Odyssey game is gone now, sitting in a store in Champaign that specializes in retro audio/visual stuff. I hope he enjoys it, or that someone else buys it and get some good use out of it. It was collecting dust at my house and I guess I would rather have the cash than the item. I guess I still have the memories,(and now, so do you...) but sometimes, possessing the thing that made the memories can make those memories more tangible. Oh well. If need be, I can always buy it back or get on one Ebay. But I doubt it. Right now I am happy with the memory and the cash, and besides, I've got to save up for an XBOX 360!

Game on!

Later!