I’m playing on a PlayStation 2, the smaller kind, just like the one I used to have twenty years ago. I’m playing The Sims and have downloaded a bunch of NSFW mods, like, truly filthy.*
The morning after I see my siblings chuckling and I realize they know. Somehow, they know about my shameful virtual pastimes. But how could they? They must have been stealing my PlayStation while I was outside!
I’m so angry I grab my sister by the throat and slam her to the floor, I want her to confess she used my videogames. She chuckles again, says the PlayStation was hers to begin with. I yell that I bought all the expansions!! I wasted so much money!!** The game is my God-given right!!!
Gran is here, all dressed up because one of my uncles died and they are all going to his funeral (jeez, I hope I actually extended his life instead!). I take the chance to hide the PlayStation parts around the house, hoping that my siblings won’t find it.
I go into my room and my sister is in her bed, pretending to sleep but fully dressed. I’m very suspicious. My bed is upside down, for some reason.
My boss is giving out birthday presents, I knew it, I knew she was generous! One of my coworkers unwraps a black console, and I gasp: is it… a Playstation 2? No, it’s a cheap Made in China rip-off. I unwrap mine, there is an old SNES inside. I already own one, though! Not to mention, the Super Mario cartridge in it is fake.
On my way home I stop at the local toy store, I’m planning to buy some toys to entertain bored children at work*. I choose a wooden truck, a white plushie and pink plastic goggles. The man at the register says it’s gonna be 18 bucks, I’m taken aback because I only have 20 in my wallet. It should be 12, max! The man points out I’ve taken two pair of goggles instead of one. I confess I can’t pay that much money and walk out the store.
At home my dad is opening some boxes that were just delivered. Inside there are black-covered Penguin books for my brother, we tease him but he insists he won them. I pick up one, Anne of Green Gables, and decide to enter a contest with it.
The night of the contest I present an essay on the book alongside a cake inspired by it: it’s lemon cream, honey and cookies. There is a big ceremony happening in a hotel on Lake Como, and all my family came along. It’s a summer night, the hotel garden is green and glistening, all the guests are dressed fancy and laughing pleasantly. I want pizza so I venture outside, order some from an intercom outside a big yellow gate. More of my family arrives and I find out they are serving pizza at the hotel, I wasted my money. A movie is being showed in the garden.
I win the contest, alongside three more kids from around Europe. The morning after we are gathered for a photoshoot on the lake. I choose what to wear, gray pants and a gray waistcoat to go with it, I feel very elegant. My hair is red, short and unruly, it gets bushier and bushier with the humidity until I look like Annie Warbucks.
Each of us is given a sign saying our name, our age and the title of our essay. Mine says I’m 18, older than the other kids. We walk in the lake and are told to hold our signs up and smile the wildest, happiest smile. Our pictures are taken. I review them later and they are not bad, I’m jealous about the professional camera’s quality compared to my phone’s. There’s also a photo of the cake I baked perfectly framed against the lake.
I want to send some of these pictures to my penpal C., but I decide I look too bad. Not the ugliest, because with my puffy hair I look a bit like my Grandma, but I don’t want C. to think I’m anything else than gorgeous. Instead I write her about a chapter from Anne of Green Gables that I really liked.
In it Anne is sitting in a wooden train car with her mom and newborn brother. A black woman walks in with a little boy, who is crying because he was too late to enter the book contest. The woman is about to get mad, when Anne’s mom asks his name. “Chemical,” says the boy.
“Well, I’m not gonna call you that, it sounds like a pill.”
Anne’s mother tells him everyone is tired and sad sometimes, he just needs to take a deep breath. The boy’s mom is so moved hearing these words that she takes the baby from the other woman’s arms and start breastfeeding him.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 