I went through a close to three year phase in which I would focus in on all of the "coolest" made-in-China crap you could ever imagine. I"ll admit, a faux leather wrist strap with transparent blue spikes sticking out of it does sound just a tiny bit ridiculous now, but back then, the only thing that might have been cooler would have been a jetpack. No I take it back. This spiky wrist strap was way cooler. And it was all mine. The only thing required from me was to obtain half a dollar and to conquer one of my arch-enemies. The claw.
Immediately I rushed over to the machine and drooled all over the glass. Spikes. On your wrist. I probably would have envisioned myself adorning this masterful piece of work on my wrist while sporting a leather jacket and being the coolest grade-schooler you've ever seen, but there was no time to lose. I had to beg my mom for some money before she walked too far from the machine. As I approached her, a sudden dreadful thought clouded my mind.
I decided to try my luck and ask her anyway. That's when my worst fears came to life. As I remember, the conversation went something like this:
Me: "Hey Mooooom! Can I borrow two quarters so I can play the claw game and win pretty much the coolest thing ever created on earth by human hands?"
Mom: "No."
Psh, whatever. It's not like we don't go to this grocery store every other day. Eventually she'll have to cave-in to my age-ten perfected nagging skills and give me at least the chance to win the spiky-wristy-thing. Right? Fast-forward a couple of months later. I nagged my mom about the spike bracelet practically every day but to no avail. Perhaps I would never have the opportunity to flaunt around my spiky wrist in other people's faces for enjoyment after all.
It was now getting pretty close to my birthday, and my parents had told me that we would be celebrating it at the Dave & Busters down near the mall. I was so freakin' excited about Dave & Busters for the next week that the spike bracelet didn't even enter my mind once. Until I walked through those double doors. Boom. An identical claw machine to the one at the grocery store, except this one had spiked wrist straps and spiked collars. I was immediately transported to a place in my imagination that involved something to do with strange spiky apparel. I was so immersed in these thoughts however, that I didn't even notice that my parents had already paid for our game cards and were walking away. When I noticed this, I realized that I had just blown my chances of begging my parents for their money. The "but it's my birthday" excuse would just have to wait.
After about ten minutes, I realized that this place was enormous. Nobody could convince me that this place wasn't bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. It literally just kept going and going. After about three straight hours of partying, it had begun getting late and we still had to get home to eat cake and stuff. Of course the entrance and exit of the place were the same doors, and that gave me just enough time to pass by the claw machine yet again and bring back those taunting memories of spiky wrist and neck wear. This was about the time when it occurred to me that my parents had just paid for me and my entire family to enjoy unlimited gaming at the Dave & Busters, and I got the feeling that it would be ungrateful to ask them for more. Just after leaving, I realized that that would probably the last time I ever saw the claw machine again, to which I had an internal meltdown for letting my last chances to be spiky and awesome slip away so easily.
Now I was eleven years-old, but that didn't mean anything because I still didn't have any way of expressing my love for spiky wrist and neck gear. Somehow in all of this, my older brother overheard me talking constantly about my love for these things and referred Mom to a store that might carry something similar to my spiky needs. That's all it took. Close to four months of begging and pleading was nothing compared to my brother's words of wisdom, apparently. But it didn't matter. My mom finally agreed to make her son become the coolest guy ever.
When my mother and I entered into this store for the first time, I immediately began to question my brother's sanity. Every person in this place looked like something straight out of a horror movie. Of course the first guy to greet us was a man completely hidden in a black cloak with a massive needle running through his "face".
While I slowly started to gather the fact that I was the only eleven year-old in his school uniform at the store, my mom casually explained to the Grim Reaper that she was looking for a spiked choker for her son. He somehow manged to spawn a cellphone out of nowhere and call other locations around the area to see if they had anything in stock. He was just starting to explain to us that "they're on back-order" for the next couple of weeks, when a random employee walked up and handed me a collar that he had apparently found digging around in the "back room". It was exactly what I was hoping for, but by this point the only thing in my mind was if it would be possible to escape this place alive.
Now... I had finally achieved the goal I had been dreaming of for the past few months... I am now the coolest person who ever lived...
...I wore the collar one time and realized that I looked completely ridiculous in public...but! The story doesn't end there. In fact, this was only one of the many strange pre-tween phases that I went through. I have gone through so many of these phases in fact, that I am going to blog about them in a 3 part series. So stay tuned!
...TO BE CONTINUED
