Bringing Back the Dead

This past Christmas we didn't have much in the way of funds for gifts. And of course, the kids wanted every thing they saw on the TV. The girls wanted dolls and doll houses, the boys wanted video games and action figures, and my teen daughter wanted, thankfully, books.

This post, I will spotlight on the boys. This year, they both put on their Christmas list, Nintendo DS. AS everyone knows, they are not inexpensive and to my wife and I, not the kind of money you spend on young kids. So, my sister-in-law had two old Nintendo Gameboy Color units that her girls did not use any more. She wrapped them up and gave them to my boys. Well, they were so excited about getting them, they didn't care that they were not brand new or the DS model. They played and played their respective game until they exhausted every option.

It so happens that they received some money for Christmas also. So, they wanted more games for their old consoles. A quick search on eBay found an unlimited supply of older game unites and cartridges. Though, not as cheap as we would have expected for a game system that was this old. But we purchased several lots of cartridges for them.

Now, the boys play their old Nintendo Game Boys more than they do their games on our Wii. There are two lessons here. One that I adhere to most of the time: Just because the technology is old, doesn't mean that it is dead or not useful anymore. I have three old Palm organizers that I use for my daily schedule and reading ebooks despite having an Android phone with this capability. I have an old Tandy WP-2, Alphasmart Dana, and NEC-PC 8201a that I write my posts and stories on. These old items still work as they did when new and are still useful.

The second lesson is that kids don't always care that a gift is new to appreciate it. My kids especially, because we are usually unable to buy new items for them. But they are just as happy with their gift despite that fact.

We try to bring back the dead and breathe new life into things because most of the things people don't want any more are still useful, and in the process we save money that we usually don't have..