Trey's Gameboy (This is a great story!)

I never wrote about this unfortunate event in blogs past, perhaps in an effort to try to erase a bad memory. It took place on our initial journey to Italia in August and contributed to the rocky beginning that now seems like a distant memory. I have often stated that I may attend the Olympics one day (Likely the summer variety) as a proud father watching his son compete. That is, if they make video game playing an Olympic sport! Trey has had a fixation for video games since he was about four and at times we have pondered sending him to “Betty Ford” to kick the habit.

While sitting in the Air France lounge at LAX, about one hour prior to departure on the 7th of August, Trey asked us if we had seen his Gameboy DS case that housed not only the video game consol itself, but his entire library of video games (Somewhere between 20 and 25 amassed over a five year period). The unfortunate fact is that no one in the Braheem clan had seen hide nor hair of the little black bag. An immediate look of panic raced across his face (Not like this was the most celebrated day of his eight year old life anyway, given the fact that he was leaving ALL he knew at the time. In fact, one might say that his DS served the same comforting purpose that a pacifier does to a three week old).

Ours minds immediately shifted into “Sleuth Mode”, “Did you leave it in the vehicle that drove us to the airport? “I asked, “Honey did you leave it on the belt when we went through radar an hour ago?” asked Anna. “I bet you left it at home” is the conclusion we came to in the end. This prompted an immediate call to Emily our house sitter who is living at our home during our one year journey abroad. We hadn’t even left American soil and we had already made Emily the captain of a massive “APB” for Trey’s Gameboy.

“Don’t worry buddy, I’m sure that when we land in Italy in fifteen hours that Emily will have found it and we can have her Fed-X it to us”, I said. Fifteen hours later we received the bad news that it was no where to be found (And believe me she looked everywhere). It was bad enough that he lost his $150.00 gameboy, but much worse that his life history of games was gone as well. We could replace the gameboy in Italy, but finding all those games was a futile cause because they would all be in Italian and impossible for him to read. The only conclusion that we could all draw (Especially because Trey insisted that he had it with him in the car on the way to the airport) was that he left it on the screening belt (Security check) at the airport. In the end, I must say, he took it about as well as I could ever imagine. Hell, I almost cried FOR him! The silver lining in this story is that he suddenly had a lot of free time on his hands, time that he soon filled with his new found hobby of reading! Not a bad trade off in mine and Anna’s minds.

Why do I tell this story some five months after it occurred, with the loss of his gameboy a faded memory? The answer lies in the most bizarre occurrence of the entire sixteen days back in California. On January 1st, I was sitting in our family room, packing DVD’s for our trip when Anna sat down on the floor in front of me, looked at me straight in the eye and said “You’re never going to believe this one” and slid Trey’s gameboy bag in front of me, complete with his consol and all of his games! My jaw dropped, I was simply shocked by the sight of it!

It seems that it somehow was kicked under Olivia’s bed all the way near the wall and had been under there for five months. Trey was at his buddy Trevor’s house when the lost treasure was found. His reaction when coming home is captured in the below photographs. Enjoy….