C’mon dad, can you buy me Pokemon Emerald? Though I was disappointed with my father’s initial reply, I am grateful for it. “You gotta work for it”.
By this point, I had already been cutting the yard as a chore for a couple of years and my dad convinced me to go out and use that skill to make money. Somewhere along the line, I came to understand that my dad wasn’t gonna buy me any game I wanted just cause I asked.
Despite my best efforts, I only cut a yard or two and came up a little short, but my father told me he’d cover the rest as he said something along the lines of “You can afford many of the things you want if you are willing to work for it”.
That was one of the best lessons our father ever imparted upon us as we would continue to cut yards to buy things like games and junk food once we moved back in with our grandmother though to be fair, our most active yard cutting years were around the time of the Wii’s release.
The year is now 2006, and after we locked in that $250 for our Wii, we took our years of yard cutting skills around our neighbourhood and started cutting some green to make some green. Despite the summer heat, we were making a nice amount of money for a teenage “entrepreneur” earning at least $20 every Saturday, with some of our best days earning up to $60.
Things were going good until the $170 mark, when we mistakenly hit something in a customer’s yard, rendering our lawnmower inoperable. Thankfully we had an uncle who was able to fix it but it hurt our pocketbook hard and set us back about $100. This also meant that we would not be able to afford our Wii before the end of summer and start of school though even if we did save up enough, Wii’s were constantly sold out.
In 2007, I think I started a bit earlier; spring instead of summer, now that we had a decent footing and some loyal customers. After cutting all summer, we finally managed to save up enough by late-July, early-August but now came a new challenge; calling retailers and seeing who potentially had Wii’s in stock. After days and maybe weeks of calling, we finally found a Wal-Mart that had 2-4 Wii’s in stock and assured me they would hold on to one for me if I would be along shortly to pick it up.
Love my supportive grandmother who knew I sweated for 2 summers doing whatever it took to save up for a Wii as she was more than happy to take me there where I finally made the purchase. Finally, in August of 2007, I owned a Wii, but wait…gonna need some games and accessories.
2008 would now be spent cutting yards on Saturday’s and sneaking out on Sunday’s to GameStop to buy games like Pokemon DP/Battle Revolution and other Wii staples like Galaxy, Brawl, Mario Party, etc. Actually Wii filmed our collection at the time, have a look:
As you can see, I no longer had to stress or be nervous about asking my parents to buy me games now that I was doing a good job affording them on my own. That was until the announcement of the Nintendo DSi release on April 5, 2009 which put me in a crunch as that was right around the time I would start cutting to save. Also, as you can see from the video, my DS Lite was on its last leg so an upgrade was a must.
Don’t know how we did it, but we was able to afford the DSi on release day and had to wait a week to play our version of Pokémon Platinum as by this point, our DS Lite was almost certainly broken.
2009 had many more games for us to save and buy and there was also no storage of accessories that we need to get for our DSi/Wii combo we were hitting the green again to, you know…continuing to fueling our hobby. 2009 had just as many hits as the previous two years with games like Nostalgia, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mario & Sonic and the Winter Olympic Games, Wii Fit, Pokemon Platinum & Bowser Inside Story just to name a few.
Other than that it was just more of the same in 2010, but this would be our final yard cutting year as we were getting ready to graduate, go to college and look for an actual job that paid much better. Our last big yard cutting venture was to save up for the upcoming Nintendo 3DS releasing in 2011. Unfortunately, due to the previously mentioned transition, we were unable to save up enough in time and made the terrible decision to sell most of our Wii games for the remaining 30% or so cost of the 3DS. Shortly after this, with the help of our dad, we got a job at his company and with that our yard-cutting for games days were over.
Up until moving to Japan, yard cutting had been relegated purely to maintaining the appearance of our home while having a job natural helped us not only afford games but handle the bills that come along with being an adult.
Thanks to our father’s wisdom, we grew up to be a work-a-holic just like him and it’s gotten us this for. So to out ol’ man, daddio, thanks for the life lesson~
Looks like Surtus left a in progress tag as usual. Eh, no harm in letting his antics stay.
Well now what do we have here? Wait, are you saying your species can’t naturally generate a tradeable resource like Ezuns just by existing? Man, sucks you gotta work for it. This landscaping thing can’t be tough if you’re doing it for games. All I gotta do is log into my Exualtscape Frame and I’ve got immersive access to all my interactive media and more. Ever played Azure Blitz with someone in a different star system? What am I saying? Your world is…well…lacking to say the least. Well, guess I’ll wait for this not to be in progress and size things up again.