Though it may seem silly, I find the ease with which I can buy video games to be a useful metric of my success as an adult. The frictionless access to digital storefronts and the spending money to use on them has not always been available to me.
Before I had a career; before much of my schooling, before my independence—both personal and financial from my parents—I had to make it through the patience-testing, dream-deferring purgatory of my childhood. And if you were to boil down all those frustrations, all those pipe dreams and one-dimensional fantasies, you would find no better microcosm than my Saturdays spent at the flea market.
When my brother and I were younger, a considerable chunk of our Saturdays was spent making the trip down from the Bronx to the Aqueduct Flea Market in Queens with our mother, who had a stall selling the sample dresses she’d buy in bulk from department stores around the city. For our part, my brother and I would help carry then assemble metal pipes and heavy tarp into the makeshift canopy under which she worked.
The gleaming carrot responsible for rousing us from our Saturday morning stupor was the prospect of exploring the limitless expanse of weird and delightful misfits and junk vendors that composed the market. For my brother and I, the most sought after destination of all was the used video game vendor; a short man with a plain expression who stood behind colorful, densely packed rows of games, and who infrequently appeared at various spots around the market like some traveling merchant dragging a trunk full of shrink-wrapped splendor. …continue reading on Waypoint