When I was seven years old, I desperately wanted a pet cat. We already had a parakeet, but it wasn’t cuddly or friendly to me and I wanted to take care of something for myself. I also wanted a Tamagotchi, the small digital pets on keychains that all of my friends were obsessed with. So, little seven-year-old me devised a plan- I could convince my parents that having a Tamagotchi would show me how to take care of something, and once they saw I could do that, they would get me a cat of my own. It was a fool-proof plan, and I succeeded in obtaining my own Tamagotchi. Unlike my best friend, who had what seemed like 100 of them, I only had one, but it was my pride and joy. It was a little pink reminder of my “responsibility” plan that hung from the keyring on my backpack.
Well, long story short, it didn’t last long. At the beginning, it was fun; I felt like I had an important job whenever I fed to it or attended to it. But it didn’t take long for me to get annoyed with it. When the digital pet is in the “baby” stage, it constantly needs attention and always wants to play games. I got so annoyed with the constant game playing that I started to ignore it. I hated that I was spending so much time staring into this little screen at a pet that wasn’t even real. My annoyance at the thing outweighed my determination of the plan, and I put it in my drawer and forgot about it. I let it die. I killed my Tamagotchi.
Even at seven years old, I realized that the fake computerized pet was not the equivalent of having a real one, and the responsibility was completely different. I did get my own cat, just later at ten years old, once I had had a few years to mature. Having a real live cat and having a digital one obviously does not translate the same. If I forget to feed my cat, she doesn’t die, she meows obnoxiously loud at me until I give her some Fancy Feast. If I don’t play with her, she really doesn’t care, because she’d rather be sleeping in the sun anyway.
Having that Tamagotchi didn’t prepare me for being responsible for a real cat, and it didn’t prepare me for the responsibilities of getting older either. Tamagotchis really only had three things you had to worry about- feed it so it’s not hungry, clean up so it doesn’t get sick and play games with it so it’s happy. As I got older, I had responsibilities where I worried about more than three things at a time. I got a job, where I had to worry about restocking items, checking customers out, making sure the store was clean, opening fitting rooms, watching the door for thefts, and keeping people happy- all at the same time. It was overwhelming, but it was real life, non-computerized responsibility.
Maybe if I didn’t let it die, I could have gained more “responsibility” from taking care of the Tamagotchi. But let’s face it- it was an unrealistic game that I could forget about, because it wasn’t real. You can’t forget about real responsibilities, you can’t put them in your dresser drawer and let them die. But you can feed them with hard work and determination, way more than I ever fed my Tamagotchi.
