The legacy of saturdays

Time shifts forward pretty fast. Whether you're busy at work or at school during the weekdays, you only get one chance during a week to enjoy the bliss that's known as Saturday.

In my early childhood, Saturdays usually composed of watching cartoons, playing with my toys and action figures outside, and being the life of the party.



I was also one of those kids who liked sitting close to the tv.

And at that time, my older siblings would usually do other things more often than being around me. My sister was usually seen in her room, either tidying it up, or setting her ceramic pottery neatly around her desk, while my brother would leave the house and hang with a few of his buds, or dig out his collection of Hot Wheels cars. My mom, on the other hand, often times did chores around the house.



And wouldn'tcha know it? We soon had to start doing chores ourselves! Sadly, allowance wasn't part of the deal...

As I'd moved to 4th grade in school, it was time that my sister would move away. Despite her moving so many states away, we all missed her, and this led to having family game night every Saturday and Sunday. Our mom went out and bought Scrabble, Sorry, Candy Land, and a few others. And since my mom usually went to work on Saturday nights, my brother and I would sometimes play the strategy-based game, battleship.



C'mon, you just had to love saying that well-known quote from the commercial.... "YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP!"

As a year passed, family game night was no longer a curfew, so we started it only if we all agreed when to. I seemed to make a few friends, so going outside with my action figures became more of a thrill as my friends had some of their own. Of course, being outside also led to curiosity in the neighborhood. Sometimes we got away with stuff, other times we got caught by the neighbors or our own parents spying on us. My friends and I usually went out of our way to have our own fun though. An example was an abandoned garage and house in the back of the neighborhood. Beside the house was a twin sized mattress. We would put it in front of the garage, climb it, then jump from the garage onto the mattress. I had a slight fear of heights at the time, but there was a ladder that my friend took from his house to climb the garage. Unfortunately after a few weeks of doing this, the neighbor next door had finally caught us and called both of our parents, leading to a month of being grounded.



On the bright side, I could at least read some of my comic books, even though some were out of the ordinary...

With the year of 1998 rolling in, the Pok'emon craze swept around the schools and in my neighborhood. My action figures slowly got sold, and I began asking my mom to buy the booster packs of the trading cards. I didn't have a GameBoy at the time, so I had both the trading cards and some of the toy merchandise, and being glued to the tv show. So even if all of my friends had Red and Blue, they still had their own deck of the trading cards, and we chose wisely on the best pok'emon to play, even if it meant having to go outside. If it rained, we went to the public baseball field and played under the dugout. We had our backpacks and a binder to store our cards, so we didn't have to worry about our cards getting soaked on the way.



Constantly buying those plastic pockets for the cards were mandatory as we were buying more and more cards as the weeks went by.

Unfortunately by the next year, the cards were banned from our schools and playing the card game came to a cease for all of the pok'emon fans out there. I kept my deck for collecting, though.

As summer of 1999 came around, My mom wanted to move out of state and with some of the relatives that I hadn't seen before. The state we moved to was pretty depressing, as the weather was constantly rain, and even with clear weather, there wasn't a lot to do outside. I focused mostly on dealing with any homework I had from school, or play games on the Sega Dreamcast my brother had recently bought. He had also said that this would be the last year that he would be with the family, as he signed up for the Air Force. I couldn't believe my ears. How could I possibly have any fun during the weekend without my best and only brother?

The years passed as I was with my parents for the longest time. I was depressed as I reminisced the days of being with my friends and siblings. Saturdays as I knew it were a thing of the past as it just wasn't the same. So, with the fun gone, it became my job to do the chores around the house. I soon pushed myself into the world of the internet as the boredom was killing me. Whether it was watching the thousands of videos on Youtube, or being mischievous on the RetroJunk forums, I wanted to kill as much time as possible.

But these days, I still often look back on the things I did during the weekends of my childhood.



And with the memories aside, I believe it's time that I head out. Farewell, fellow RetroJunkers. This is my final article, and my last visit on this glorious site. Moving forward, and setting my goals that lie ahead of the path of life.