If you were born in the early 2000s, you’ve probably played Minecraft at least once. Maybe you were the kid who was obsessed with it and had all the survival guides and three editions of the same game, or maybe you were the one who was tired of hearing about it all the time and cringed at any cube shaped object for the next few years. I, no surprise here, was the former. One of my favorite times of the day was arriving home from school and hopping on my Xbox 360 to greet my virtual dogs and cats inside my poorly built spruce treehouse. Times were simpler when my only worries were if I could find my way out of a cave before nightfall and forgetting to grab enough sand for my windows.
Now it’s 2020, and I’m almost seventeen years old. It’s so surreal to type that out or even just say it. It still doesn’t feel quite real. I miss being that little girl on the playground with her iPad mini playing pocket edition with my friends over the school wifi. I miss being that little girl blowing out the 12 candles on her grass block birthday cake. I miss being that little girl huddled around her friends telling their made-up encounters with Herobrine. I just wish I had cherished those moments more and stopped worrying about what people thought of me. If I could go back and tell my younger self something, it would probably be along the lines of “there is no such thing as being ‘cool’ in elementary school; just have fun and make the most of it.”
What brought all of this back was a single track that came on Spotify while I was doing my history homework.
Maybe it’s a tad pathetic that I started to cry over this, but I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m not ashamed to say I was brought to tears by the OST of a kids’ game. It brought a great big goofy smile to my face, and I couldn’t help but reminisce over hunting for the ingredients for cake and trying to calculate the time before my online friends would come home from school so we could ‘eat’ it together. Finding diamonds by lava pools, showing off to my friends how I could make a nether portal without even picking up an obsidian block, building beacons of dirt into the sky so I wouldn’t lose my house, and even fighting the ender dragon for the first time—they’re all great memories to look back on. It makes me think of that one Winnie the Pooh quote I had as my phone background for a while.
“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.”
Maybe I’ll take a late grade for my class and pop on Minecraft for a bit. I wonder if my dogs are still waiting for me.
You didn’t have to go this hard on a blog about Minecraft, but you did! And I loved it! Just the fact that most of our generation has this one thing we all have in common and relate to is kind of incredible. Reading this brought back a lot of fond memories from elementary school. The Pooh quote especially hit a little different today. If y’all catch me playing Minecraft anytime soon, mind your business.
Ohh noooo! This tug at my heartstrings and got me in all the feels. That quote too?! This was-immaculate.
Ahhh, Lauren, this made me smile so much!! I grew up playing Minecraft as well, and the nostalgia of this piece is so heartwarming.