Creeva’s World 2.0

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing some­thing cool with the Nin­tendo Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem.   This unfor­tu­nately is not the case.  Where the Nin­tendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I des­per­ately wanted an NES.  This was some­time around sev­enth or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nin­tendo was in full swing, you can see one of the com­mer­cials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years ear­lier he got us a Com­modore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy — my par­ents fell for the whole “give you kid a com­puter and he’ll be com­puter lit­er­ate for life” crap that they were hand­ing out in the eight­ies.  A com­puter was meant for learn­ing and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn some­thing on.   I learned I never wanted to be a pro­gram­mer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neigh­bors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Clas­sic — but me — I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t get­ting any­thing else.

Pic­ture from here

We moved to Ver­mil­ion the sum­mer before my sev­enth grade year.   I’m sure I started beg­ging for a NES around that time if not ear­lier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nin­tendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant get­ting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Ver­mil­ion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12–13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the abil­ity to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11–12 year old to deliver papers, but Ver­mil­ion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Pic­ture from here (not me)

Another boy was giv­ing up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long tran­si­tion with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my lit­tle punch card slip ring for billing, I had a car­rier bag, and I also had bas­kets on the back of my bicy­cle to carry news­pa­pers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stu­pid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree any­ways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I strug­gled through it.  I was a news­pa­per boy for the Lorain Morn­ing Jour­nal.

You may say that I learned char­ac­ter and fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a pas­sion.   I strug­gled for the first cou­ple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action Sys­tem which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zap­per).   I was impa­tient to get it, so impa­tient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large pur­chase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the sys­tem myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Even­tu­ally my mother pulls up in that blue dodge car­a­van (mini­van) we had.  She had done other shop­ping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales per­son who told her the Sega Mas­ter Sys­tem was the bet­ter sys­tem to buy since it was faster and sup­ported more col­ors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Mas­ter Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Mas­ter Sys­tem, only peo­ple with no friends owned a Sega Mas­ter Sys­tem.   I was not going to own a Sega Mas­ter Sys­tem.    I told her with cer­tainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Mas­ter Sys­tem.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nin­tendo Enter­tain­ment System.

My mother then started laugh­ing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nin­tendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way — ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toi­let I was already on World 1–2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grand­fa­ther thought it was good for me so I kept plod­ding along.    I deliv­ered papers a 3 AM Christ­mas morn­ing wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would def­i­nitely pre­ferred to have been sleep­ing.    More and more of my cus­tomers were mov­ing to pre­paid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bot­tom line, but I lost out on tip money from these cus­tomers — and to this day I believe the Jour­nal used some cre­ative account billing to the paper boys.    My grand­fa­ther thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grand­par­ents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grand­fa­ther and my mother in deliv­er­ing the news­pa­pers.   Now I don’t know about you but if some­one would have dri­ven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actu­ally like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The fun­ni­est thing was after about a year they started loos­ing money also and it became not finan­cially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my fam­i­lies rela­tion­ship with the Jour­nal after so many bad expe­ri­ences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sis­ter (now 22) has a motor route in Ver­mil­ion deliv­er­ing papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sis­ter ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route loca­tion of my paper route.