KIDS WILL BE KIDS

04. nintendo ds

the richest in the group was sunghoon. do you still remember, loverboy, how we would fight over sunghoon's nintendo ds? that was really the good old times, out of everything, i would pick this memory to be the best of all.

it was slowly but surely. unnoticed by the eyes, the trend of nintendo ds swept our humble neighborhood like a lighting bolt in the middle of broad daylight. the trend wrecked havoc in many households, rich, poor, middle class every household with kids running around the house would beg for their parents to get them one nintendo ds because "everyone is having it!"

one by one, our classmates, then our seniors, then our juniors would brag that they had just gotten themselves a nintendo ds. anywhere you turned at school, they'd be a group of friends mentioning nintendo, how expensive the nintendo was and "yours was definitely cheaper than mine," thus, the most expensive nintendo won. the other would listen and react in adoration, feeding the ego of the person boasting while inside, they'd love to punch their friend in their face to make them zip their mouth.

nintendo ds itself, had various of colors. and with those colors also determined how cool yours was. for boys, it should be anything but pink and for girls it should be nothing but pink.

the colors itself had its own rank among boys. if you got the white or the black one then, you were one of the elites. those two colors were the ones selling out really fast, so there was a competition between the kids while for parents it was a tough test of splitting money between buying the nintendo that would make their kids shut up or buy one or more kilogram of rice for every day needs.

our class was noisy with kids bragging and smuggling their nintendo to class. during lunch break, the once view of kids peacefully having meals while joking around had turned to be kids sitting on the floor with some friend around and was immersed in their nintendo game match with each other.

and our friend group, was no exception. the trend passed by and wrecked havoc among us within this vulnerable thin bubble of our friendship. we were able to shrugged it off at first, even without communicating it, none of us wanted to get involved with what other kids were busy talking about. we kept our eyes on our shoes as we walked down the hall or going home. yet, without us knowing, sunghoon had secretly asked his parents to buy him one and he had this implied meaning to show off to his friends, to our friend group.

one afternoon when the sun was high and clouds like broccoli hanging in the sky occasionally would block the sun's beam, we were taking a short rest after a tight soccer match. sunghoon wasn't there during the match but it made a fair team of three on three. not long after that though, as the clouds started to move again, sunghoon, in the distance, showed up.

one of his hand was holding a thing it reflected the sun, twinkling in the distance that i had to squint my eyes to make out what was it that he was holding. but i wasn't as fast as jungwon when he roared, "sunghoon got himself a nintendo!" then we all scrambled toward sunghoon.

sunghoon, had this annoying smile. it was like he was telling us that he had won for being the first person in the friend group to have a nintendo. the famous nintendo ds and in black. when loverboy asked how did he get that, he answered, "my dad has his own ways of getting me this," he shrugged his shoulder that made me shiver in disbelief. niki, through his stammering korean, also asked, "but my friends said (all) black sold out, how (come)?"

again, he just shrugged. then laughed wickedly.

it happened so fast that next thing i realized was we were getting in each other's way to get the earliest queue of borrowing the nintendo. niki got last and he sulked. but jake wouldn't stay still and be contented with his number which was two numbers earlier than niki. instead, he chose violence. he picked on niki, jokingly mocked him in a sing-song voice that of course, didn't give him any good but a swat upside his head. the two of them cried.

but the commotion didn't stop there. as i was busy arguing with jungwon upon a matter he had came late during the rock-paper-scissor match, heesung and you, loverboy, had gotten into an argument too. which was shocking, because why would you? i mean, we were all kids but now that i reminisce on it, we were all just really dumb.

it was when the sun still high in the sky, we had ourselves stood in front of sunghoon's house, by his wooden fence, with both of our arms up in the sky our hands were in ball of fists, for as long as the detention last as per sunghoon's dad's firm statement. we were burning under the sun, and that was apparent judging from how we had turned to boiled lobsters in someone's lawn. sunghoon's dad kept a close eye to us, at the porch, on his bamboo chair with a long, study, thin cane on his lap.

ready to slap our bottoms if we were slacking on the detention.

sunghoon's nintendo? well, it was safe in his dad's confiscation until the next year where six of us became five graders and niki a fourth grader.