My biological fathers
Gameboy
You can take it home with you
By Yahoo Silverman
In the spring of 2007, a little more than a month after my 17th birthday, my biological father died. Referring to him simply as my “biological father” adequately and justly encapsulates what the relationship with the man who gave me his name and face was. The word biological, when used as an adjective, is impersonal, technical, cold, distant, and in this case... accurate.
I have roughly five memories of my biological father, the last of which being in 2005 when he called our house phone and asked for my mother. He had two sons with my mother and given any degree of logic he would have certainly known that the cracking mid-puberty voice on the other side of the line would likely share the same uncommon last name as his. He never said “Hello” he never said, “Is this [me] or [my brother]”, he simply asked “can I talk to your mom?”. I said yes and made my way from the dining room to the kitchen where my mother was standing, all the while keeping the phone pressed to my ear in case he asked a follow up question, which he never did. That was the last interaction I had with my biological father.
For years I would replay that interaction in my head. The sight of his name in the caller ID striking immediate premonition. The deep and familiarly unfamiliar voice that was two-parts solicitor and no part paternal asking me “can I talk to your mom”. Through my adolescence, up to that point, wishful thinking grew into unhealthy expectations that one day my biological father would enter the lives of both my brother and I, likely when we were adults, and the past would be buried. While the past was never truly burried, in that moment those wishful thoughts and unhealthy expectations were. They were dead and buried 2 years before my biological father would be.
I was angry with him. I viewed him as immoral and unconscionable, a weak coward of a man. I refused to visit him when he was on his death bed. But, like most things in life, years of experiencing pain, failure, and shame can change you. This taught me to sympathize even with those who may not necessarily deserve sympathy. Today, I forgive him. In my Last of Us Part II essay I cite a quote by Lewis B. Smedes which reads “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that prisoner was you”. I see no problem double dipping with that quote, and if I can get that deep with a video game then maybe I should look at my own life sometimes.
As mentioned, I have 5 memories with my biological father that I can recall. I will list them in chronological order and then home in on the one we are here for.
Holiday 1997: My biological father took my brother and I to the mall to buy us Christmas presents. I got a Yak Bak, 2 Star Wars actions figures, and a Brett Favre bobble head (he had bucked teeth at the time like me, so I liked him).
Summer 1998: My brother and I stay the weekend with my biological father, his new wife (6th wife I believe), and her kids Shane and Siobahn who were nearly a decade older than my brother and I. Shane had a collection of cool NFL helmet figurines and their house had a pool.
Summer 1998: My biological father and his wife (6th I believe) take my brother and I to the mall. On the car ride there he was upset that I called him by his first name and not “dad”. At the mall he taught my brother and I that if you dip a straw into liquid and cap the top end of it with your finger that the straw will continue holding the liquid it contained, even once it is removed from its source. I thought that was cool, and still do.
Summer 1998: My brother and I stay with my biological father once again. He lets me play with his Gameboy. It was the original Gameboy, big and grey with a green unlit screen. His only game was Muhammed Ali Heavyweight Boxing. I could only get past the first fight, and he beat the second one for me. I was stuck at the third. I was 8. I think he could tell how much I liked his Gameboy. He let me keep it. He wanted me to like him. I understand that now.
We stopped visiting him after that. At some point he moved away to Texas, however I would learn upon his death that for the last several years of his life he lived less than an hour away.
The final memory is the aforementioned phone call.
I played that game for years. I would sit on my grandmother’s patio under enough shade to block the glaring sun while letting in just enough to see the unlit screen. One by one I would fight “Lefty” Berendes, “Bad Boy” Bruce, “Rumblin Rifkin, “Nasty” Nick Bull. In my head I can still hear the games music and see the dark green pixels on the small green screen making up the triumphant howling face of Muhammed Ali after a big win. Other than a Yak Bak, 2 Star Wars Action Figures, and a buck toothed Brett Favre bobble head, that Gameboy was all I had left of my biological father, but it meant far more than those “presents not presence” attempts to gain affection. He did not buy this Gameboy for me. He bought it for himself and gave it to me. It was his rendition of paternal selflessness that I was fortunate enough to experience at the hands of my stepfather in lieu of my biological one.
The following year was the beginning of the Pokémon invasion, something we experience a resurgence of every few years like an adorable virus. My mother and stepfather would spend an exuberant amount of time, money, and energy travelling from mall to mall and store to store to track down and purchase a Gameboy color and a copy of Pokémon Yellow for me. They were hard to come by, I was 9 which is old enough to understand that Santa does not exist but not old enough to understand the intricacies of supply and demand. Thank God this was before the devastating consequences of a world relying on a single semiconductor manufacturer or scalper bros with Twitter handles meant to resemble Ethereum addresses and bio’s that use ill-defined terms like “entrepreneur” and “Web3” while they use scalper bots that leave parents choosing between paying their mortgage or giving their child what they wanted for Christmas. Don’t buy from scalpers, they’ll just blow their profits on NFT’s (lol).
My parents would succeed in finding a Gameboy Color and a copy of Pokémon Yellow. It was smaller than the big Gameboy and rather than the drab grey this one was purple. The contrast between the Yellow Pokémon cartridge and purple Gameboy Color was sexy and aesthetic as [I don’t use curse words here].
I now had two Gameboys of intrinsic value, and today I’m very grateful for what they meant. I continued to play Muhammed Ali Heavyweight Boxing on the big Gameboy for years, even as it slowly fell apart requiring several inches of duct tape to hold the batteries in place. I have not played a Gameboy in at least 15 years, let alone Muhammad Ali Heavyweight Boxing, but just as that shade of purple reminds me of my parent’s generosity, the flat dull grey color of that Gameboy will always be accompanied by that little boxing games music in my head and remind me of my biological father saying, “you can take it home with you”. Words I would one day realize meant “I’m sorry”.
