I did want the present. I did like the present. I just felt like I was unworthy of the present. I was being given a present that they went through a lot of effort to get (I genuinely can’t put into words how hard in 1988 it was to get that game to someone who isn’t familiar with the time period’s methods for acquiring such things). I just felt that other kids deserved it more than I did.

I did the same thing with food. I’d go to other friends houses, and they wouldn’t eat vegetables or whatever. So their parents would say things like “There are starving kids in Africa!”. I would overhear this, go back to my own house, and feel I was undeserving of food if there were starving kids in Africa, and here I was presented with a 4 coarse meal every night. Who was I to be special to have those options while others starved?

That’s how I felt about the game. Who was I to be deserving of this highly sought after game, which kids were literally killing each other for in poor neighborhoods, to just be given this game without earning it? What had I done to earn it? That’s what offended my mom into yelling. She went through all this trouble, and now I was saying “Woe is me to be given this gift”.

I don’t know how else to describe it, if I’m failing to do so.