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Boys and their toys
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, I preordered my iPhone 6s this week, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about wanting what’s best.
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Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: Have you heard of the Pinocchio Paradox? You know that Pinocchio’s nose grows if he tells a lie. But If Pinocchio said the statement “My nose will grow now” it would cause a paradox…
Let me explain, if he said ‘my nose will grow now’ – and if his noes does grow that would mean he wasn’t lying, but if he wasn’t lying, his nose wouldn’t grow. But then his statement would be a lie… so his nose would grow. But then the statement wouldn’t be a lie… so his nose wouldn’t grow, and so forth. You get the idea. This paradox was thought of by an 11 year old boy.
Here’s What I leaned yesterday.
It’s been a while since I shared a story from my youth and in light of recent events I’ll get to later I thought it was a good time.
My family moved back to Cornwall Ontario in the summer of 1980. I was a 10 years old kid looking for adventure. And in those days that meant touring around on two wheels. The bicycle I had when we lived in Pierrefonds Quebec had broken right before we moved. It was a real cool white and green Huffy Laredo bicycle with raised handlebars and a banana seat. In fact it’s the same bike Darrell talked about in episode 192. I had built a ramp with some friends, like we had done so many times before and spent the afternoon jumping it. You know, boys and their toys. On one of those jumps I landed wrong and snapped the forks of the front of the bike. I can still see the scar on my left hand from that wipeout and flying over the handlebars.
When we moved to Cornwall my dad said he would buy me a new bike for my birthday. Now I really wanted a BMX. One of those stunt bikes that are as popular today as they were back then. I imagined myself flying through the air, popping wheelies, doing flips, all the things I saw kids doing on TV and in the local parks. I told my dad exactly what bike I wanted and waited anxiously for my birthday to roll around, excitedly telling all my friends what I was getting.
Finally, that faithful day arrived and at my party, surrounded by my friends my dad rolled out my new bike. It was not a BMX. Or at least not the type of BMX I wanted. You see, BMX stands for bicycle motocross and is most synonymous with the slim framed trick bikes you see at events like the X-Games. But that’s only one type of BMX bike and I didn’t know that at the time.What my dad had bought me was a motocross. A bike that was dressed up to look like a motorcycle. It had high wide handlebars with a padded crossbar, huge knobby tires, a long rectangle seat and shock absorbers both front and back to absorb impact. As a finishing touch it had red plastic fenders a red number plaque on the front, mine was number 6, and of course, a red plastic gas tank to make it look like a motorcycle.
I was extremely disappointed but my friends all thought it was the coolest bike they had ever seen which improved my mood. It was cool, and nobody I knew had one. Unfortunately it was big and bulky and pretty useless for doing the tricks I wanted a BMX for and I felt a little left out when my friends all got the type of BMX I had hoped for. But I made do, and I rode that bike everywhere until my grandfather bought me a sleek 21 speed racer for my 16th birthday.
A few years after getting my motocross I was heavily into video games. I spent hours upon hours at various friends houses playing on their Atari’s, Intellivision’s and Colecovisons. My mother would sometimes complain that I never brought anyone over to our house, but I didn’t have a game console so what was the point.
My friend Shawn always had the best video toys. His older brother somehow had connections in Japan and would get systems and games that were not yet, and in some cases would never be available in North America. One year Shawn got a new computer. A Commodore 64 and all the bells and whistles to go with it. He even had a modem, one of those ancient ones where you would take your phone’s handle off the cradle and place the ear and mouth pieces onto the designated slots on the modem and dial up bulletin boards or CompuServe. We had so much fun on Shawn’s computer that a bunch of my friends also got Commodore 64s and started copying and trading games.
I wanted one so bad that when Christmas came around I told my parents that it was the only thing I wanted that year. Nothing else mattered.
On Christmas morning I ran to the tree and saw only one box with my name on it. After the nerve-wracking wait for my parents to get up and for breakfast to be over we finally got to opening presents.
With big smiles on their faces my parents handed me my box. I started opening it and saw the Commodore logo on the corner. I tore the rest of the paper off and my heart sank. My parents had not bought me a Commodore 64, they bought me a Commodore Vic-20 the older and much less powerful predecessor to the 64.
My dad told me that he had looked at both, but he considered the computer just a phase I was going through and didn’t want to spend the extra money on the Commodore 64 that cost double what the Vic-20 did.
I did spend some time on the computer, programming games I found printed in computer magazines. But the problem was that the games all my friends were playing didn’t work on my less powerful computer. It eventually gathered dust in my room while I spent most of my free time at my friends homes.
I remember years later, after my mother sold the computer, my dad telling her he was glad he hadn’t spent the extra money because it would have been a waste considering I never used the computer.
And that was the only computerized device I ever owned while living with my parents. I was living with Kim when I bought my first Macintosh, and LCII.
Here’s what I learned.
I hope I don’t sound ungrateful for what my parents bought me. I’m not. In fact I learned a valuable lesson through that motocross and Vic-20. I learned that I don’t need to have all the best toys in life.
My childhood wasn’t ruined because I couldn’t flip my bike. I had tones of fun riding that fake motorcycle around town with my friends. I didn’t become a school drop out or anything because I didn’t have the best computer. In fact I excelled at computer programming and was even offered a scholarship to pursue it beyond high school, but I had no desire to become a computer programmer and turned it down. Kind of ironic that I code websites now for a living.
I never owned a video game console growing up. And yet I was an avid gammer.
It was less than a year ago that we bought our first flat screen TV, and we still have three old CRT TVs that we watch on a regular basis, and my enjoyment of TV hasn’t been diminished.
I drive a 2003 GMC Yukon with over 300,000 KM on it. It’s always gotten me where I have to go.
I don’t need fancy toys to be happy. I learned that when I was young and it holds true today.
I thought of this topic earlier this week when I called my cellular carrier and pre-ordered a new iPhone 6s. Yes, it’s the latest toy to hit the market. But I’m getting it to replace my iPhone 4. The same phone I’ve been using since the summer of 2010.
When the iPhone 4s came out a year later, did I want it? Sure, it had Siri which mine doesn’t. But I didn’t need it. When the iPhones 5 came out in 2012 I was eligible for an upgrade but there was nothing wrong with my 4 so I didn’t bother. The same for the iPhone 5c and 5s in 2013. I couldn’t justify spending the money on a new phone when there wasn’t anything wrong with mine. I was very tempted last year when the iPhone 6 came out. But again, temptation lost out to sensibility. My iPhone 4 was still working fine. Sure it was slow but it still worked.
Only recently have I started having issues with my phone. The battery isn’t holding a charge like it used to. I’m running out of memory and find myself often having to delete things to make room. It’s stuck and can’t be upgraded beyond OS 7, and with OS 9 released this week. There are a lot of new apps that I can’t use and some of the old ones I can’t upgrade anymore. I finally bit the bullet and decided to get a new phone. Not because I want to have the newest toys, but because it’s no longer feasible to continue with mine.
Sure It’s always nice to see what new toys your friends and neighbours have, and yes it would be nice if you had them for yourself. But the fact is, we are perfectly fine without the newest and brightest whatever it is.
Just because something you don’t have is better, doesn’t mean what you do have isn’t any good.
Would I like a brand new truck or a sleek new sports car? Sure I would. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But the fact is the speed limit is the same no matter what vehicle I’m driving so a new car wont get me to my destination any faster.
My 2003 Yukon may not be under warranty anymore but whatever I pay in yearly maintenance is much less than I would pay for monthly instalments on a new truck so I’m actually better off. Not to mention all the other things I can do with the money I saved by not spending it on new toys.
They say boys and their toys, and I agree with that phrase. It’s just that this boys toys are a little older and may be beat up a bit. And I’m ok with that.
I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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