Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, I made you...

Chanukah was really no great shakes in my house. The Christmas parallel for gift giving in most Jewish homes was more akin to April 1st at my house. An eight day long prank of destroyed expectations. This will no doubt sound whiny and childish and I do recognize that I lived the good life compared to many, but one Chanukah in particular has left a scar as deep as my father's belly button, (he was very fat, 62 in. waist, R.I.P.).

My father had reappeared in my life at the time, 1983, and I was nine years old. The Atari 2600 had been on the market for a while and I wanted one. It was promised to me for Chanukah. My excitement could not be contained, it would be the first year I did not receive eight plastic toy cars or eight aluminum toy cars or some combination of plastic and aluminum toy cars. My mother was a teacher and some years I got a regift of a present some student had given my mother. I was the only little boy in Miami wearing Charlie perfume.

As Chanukah approached I perfected my skills. My neighbor in the apartment complex, Matthew, already had the Atari and we played "Combat" until our small hands were blistered. My recollection is that I kicked his ass repeatedly. I was shocked to see my dad pick me up at the JCC one afternoon. I went there after school everyday until my mother finished work and was not accustomed to my Dad pulling up in our rust colored Chevy Citation. I was actually nervous to get into the car with him because my parents had been separated on and off for as long as I could remember. I got in and he told me that my Chanukah present was at home. I was bursting. The word Atari must have been spoken a dozen times on the way home, but there would be no Pac-Man that night. I came home to the Odyssey.

The Odyssey was no fun. Really no fun. It was less video game, more typewriter. The games were versions of Hangman, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man called Cryptogram, PickAxe Pete, and KC Munchkin, respectively. Picture the fun, you leave the room while I type a word into the Odyssey, you return and I watch as body parts form on the noose as you guess, x then w then, oh you got it, "ODYSSEY SUCKS ASS." The S's gave it away.

I should have been petulant but I wasn't. My obese absent father had likely done his best. Without the Odyssey I never would have experienced the hours of entertainment my mother provided as we drove from toy store to toy store seeking out a purveyor that had heard of the Odyssey and actually sold it's small plastic cartridges.

It could have been colecovision, or intellivision but I had the Odyssey and it was sufficient until the keyboard stopped working.