“Have you seen a large, rectangular trunk back there?”
It was 10 pm and I was speaking to three road-weary men who had spent the last few hours unloading my possessions off of a truck, then hauling them into my new apartment. These were men that had forgone food and drink for hours in order to complete the move. Unfortunately for them, I had gone nearly three weeks without sight, nor sniff of any of my things, so I had grown quite antsy by that point.
“Is that the trunk back there? Do you see it?”
As the hours as wore on, I’d seen them handle several boxes that were once in pristine form after packing them up, come off the truck looking like a pinata at a birthday party. This only grew my concern and my fixation over the shape of one particular trunk. Of all of the objects that had made the move, this trunk was among the most important.
“There! Yes! That’s the one!”
This very special trunk contained all of my childhood consoles, my current consoles and a myriad of wires that connect to my television. As I opened it up and peered inside, I saw that everything was intact. Nothing was broken. The worrying could end. Being a gamer in the midst of a cross-country move is stressful enough and my experience was one for the books.
Let’s back things up to about two months prior. My fiance and I had made the decision to move out west. Not only were we moving halfway across the country, but we had to pair everything from our two bedroom apartment down into a one bedroom apartment. This meant many things had to go. Once we cleaned up, traded in media and got our donations in order, we had one last place to turn - the games. As much as it pained us, we knew that there were games and even consoles that we wouldn’t miss. In order to get rid of them fast and hassle-free, we had to take a measure that we weren’t particularly fond of, but had to be done.
Gamestop. We knew their cash trade in values weren’t great, but we timed them with in-store promotions and hoped for a decent payoff. They were cool about accepting our stack of games and we actually got more for them than we’d hoped. However, our PS3 trade-in went down in flames. Despite never modding it, it was somehow missing a warranty sticker. Oh yeah, the lense died, too. How did the lens die? I’ll never know. Instead of money, my reward was an awkward moment of having to repack everything off of the counter and take a walk of shame out of a Gamestop. A Gamestop! Needing a fast solution, I was able to find a local game store that actually accepts broken consoles. Hallelujah! Yes, my cool $95 from Gamestop went to a sizzling $25, but I didn’t care. I just wanted it off my hands.
With the PS3 taken care of and the packing all done, the next bit of trouble was right around the corner. We timed our move to coincide with the first estimated date in which the movers would load into our new apartment. We still had a week and a half before that point so we decided to live with the essentials - three suitcases of clothes, our bed and the internet. We continued living that way more than two weeks after we arrived to our new apartment, thanks to moving company bullshit.
From a gaming perspective, I needed a fix. I’m mainly a console gamer so it felt a bit awkward at first. I needed to make the best of my situation though. With that, I turned to my tablet! I could have chosen anything in the world to get me through. My choice of game? Candy Crush. Yes, I became one of *those* people. I needed a fun, yet challenging time sink and there was no better place to turn than that of the hottest puzzle game today. With nothing better to do, I played it all day, every day. In bed, on the can, you name it, I played it there. While at it, I learned new swear words and even came to revile any mere mention of the number 30. All of this came to an end once our possessions arrived weeks after we’d expected them.
Despite the setbacks, a good feeling rushed over me as the moving men took our giant trunk off of the truck. All of our gaming stuff was fine and I was getting set to game another day. Every setback, all of the hustle, bustle and frustration - it was all worth it in the end. I’m still surrounded by boxes, but at least I have my games.
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