One Of My Biggest Regrets

I've been very open about my ASD and the myriad of issues it has brought to my life, including the very common issues with making friends and forming connections.

If memory serves, I think that throughout my elementary school years, I must have made one friend. In high school, which was from late 2012 to summer 2016, I made zero friends. That was mostly because my parents moved me to England as soon as I entered high school. And without knowing English, plus the typical struggles of ASD, I entered a new era of loneliness in life.

In truth, there was one other Greek dude in that English high school, and he was my friend for about a month, but for some odd reason that I still don't quite understand, he ended up hating me. I honestly didn't do anything so not quite sure why.

Thankfully, even during my high school days in England, I'd spent my summers in Greece, and I did meet one other guy from my village, whom ended up being my best friend. He had a very strict father that kept him busy with all sorts of things even in summertime, so unfortunately, we didn't get to spend a lot of time. And autumn, winter and spring were spent in England of course away from him. But that time was unforgettable in many ways. It's what saved my high school years from being entirely lonely.

I digress a little bit. This isn't about friendship regrets because I am quite happy with what I got. In part because I can accept how difficult my condition made things, and in part because the friendships I did make were great. Also because the sudden move to England, which was vocally and repeatedly rejected from my side to no avail, made things even more hard, if not impossible.

To get to our subject of interest, we have to wind back to my elementary school days. I was always weird, but back then, I was extremely weird because I was child with no control over my strange tendencies that were in no-doubt caused by my undiagnosed condition. Pretty much everyone disliked me, including my teachers, who many times voiced far too many frustrations for my lack of participation in classes.

There was only one person that didn't for reasons I still don't quite understand. He could put up with me and my long list of faults as a kid, and he even accepted insults from hanging out with me from the other kids. Yeah, this world is extremely cruel, but everyone once in a while, you find kindness in it. This was that time.

Being kids, we had infinite free time, so we spent it together. I've got countless good memories from those sweet, problem-free days where I was blissfully oblivious to my own problems and the world's. Days where my Grandmother was still alive, and days where I was permanently in Greece.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. In Easter of 2012, that friend of mine went to his home country (he wasn't Greek) for what was supposed to be a little bit. In the summer of 2012, when we finished elementary and were supposed to move on to high school the following September, he returned. I went to his house and found countless boxes. I asked whether that was his family unpacking. But it was quite the opposite. He was packing everything to leave permanently.

I can't tell you how much I cried the last time I saw him. We did keep contact through Facebook but somewhere in 2014, he never logged back on to either of his accounts, and our connection was severed forever. I have no clue where he is right now, or if he is even alive. I pray that he simply forgot his passwords. But why wouldn't he make a friend request with a new account? Maybe he just forgot about me. I wouldn't blame him of course. We were countries apart. And I hope it's that honestly. It would be the least sinister thing.

I also wrote a story based on that parting. It's fiction and no real names are used. My main goal with it was to capture how it all was even through fictional characters. It's posted here if you so wish to read it.

Now you have the necessary background information to understand my regret. I'm a bit (okay, a lot) of a sentimental person. That great friend of mine left me his Nintendo DS Lite. He didn't give it to me, but rather, we traded our consoles. I gave him my arctic white Nintendo DSi, and in return, he gave me his onyx black DS Lite. Those are the exact colors, by the way.

There were some differences between the models. They don't matter much for this story. What matters here is that this Nintendo DS was the only thing I had left of him. Is there a word to describe such an item? I don't know. But you probably know where this is going. I used it well until 2017. At the time, I was in college, and I was playing DS games during lunch breaks. That's when I noticed that the bottom screen had gotten quite scratched up over the years. The bottom screen is touch-enabled so that's natural.

Then I thought, without ever having attempted this before, "Hey, what if I replace the front digitizer with a new one? It'll look new again!"

You probably know where this is going by now...

I went on eBay and bought a replacement. It arrived to my house and I got the screwdrivers out. Within the thirty minutes, I destroyed the poor thing. I was left with only pieces of it. I even managed to scratch the motherboard. It still worked but the D-Pad button lost functionality.

Worse than that, about a year later, figuring that this motherboard will never be feasibly usable again, I harvested the charging port and further destroyed it because I did it in a very improper way I'm too ashamed to admit. Actually, screw it. I'll admit it. I used scissors.

I left the parts of it inside a parcel bag and forgot about them. I had other DS models by that time, including a 3DS and another DSi I bought used from eBay, so this didn't feel like a huge loss.

At least not until adulthood, when I finally realized what I had done: I destroyed the only thing I had left of him. And I had no way of getting it back. I think about this a lot. Why did I do it? And why did I destroy the motherboard? If I had that, at least I could still have its heart.

It's one of my biggest regrets because I have no way of ever obtaining it back. It's something that's truly lost forever. This is what I have left of it:



It isn't much. It's missing two shell pieces (back display cover and front bottom cover), most buttons, the motherboard, and both displays. I still have a display but I'm not sure if it belongs to it. It's unlikely that it does.

I still have the BIOS chip—the green parts pictured on the right. That's an important part, though here's the thing. It's either one of those but I'm not sure which one. One belongs to my friend's and the other belongs to some broken white DS Lite I had bought for parts way back.

You'll also notice that the plastic of the rear back cover has a hole in it. That was also young me, thinking it was a good idea to pry the plastic off because he couldn't get a screw to turn.

Yep. Ouch. What's done is done, no matter how stupid it is. At least I didn't kill a person, or hurt anyone, so I'd say that I'm good for the most part.

A few months ago I did buy a broken Onyx Black DS Lite from eBay. I'm much better than my 17-year-old self so I'm going to take that "new" DS Lite apart and replace whatever parts I still have with my friend's DS. It's not going to be whole, but at least, it will live on like this, and the original firmware code will run! (If I can figure out which BIOS chip it is, that is).

I have a plan for that. Decoding my friend's DS Lite serial number to find out when it was approximately manufactured, and then use my R4 flash card to retrieve the firmware from both BIOS chips and inspect the firmware build dates—when they were compiled from source code—to compare whichever is closest. There are some roadblocks to this but it's a plan.

Oh, and that hole is underneath the battery, so it won't be visible thankfully. I'll also use polish to remove scratches and it should look brand new. I've seen some documented ways to do this online.

Those who've read my stories might remember that I've involved Nintendo consoles in several instances, which are:

• Hugo used the Pictochat feature to communicate with other children in the bus
• Lily and Rose played the Wii together for years and bonded over it
  
• Kate's Sister, Jane, was a Pokemon fan. You could only play Pokemon on Nintendo consoles back then. There's some games for mobile phones now though...

I like to involve them when I can. For my lonely young self whom didn't have much, it opened up so many worlds I could adventure in. I loved all Super Mario games and could play them for hours on end, and Pokemon was also a franchise that brought a lot of joy. Even outside the DS, I would watch the animated series and movies.

Plus, they made socialization easier at times. Most Nintendo consoles can link up with other consoles because they are meant to be shared. There were many instances, school trips for example, when I would link up with other kids for a quick Super Mario match. Sure, I didn't make friends with them, but that was more joy in my life!

I particularly remember my neighbor's kids. They all had DSs and we'd link them up sometimes over the night fire that the adults used to make alcohol using a furnace-like thing. We called it the kazani and it was a reason to make a gathering. Us kids would go away from the noisy adults who would talk about boring politics and play the Nintendo DS farther back in the dark garden, our screens shining on our faces. But we played other traditional games like tag too. The garden was big enough for that.

Yeah, those were the days. I'm feeling like watching an old Pokemon movie now, and I just might.

For those that read until the end—thank you!