Already beginning to salivate, I started to head up the stairs to the ground floor of the house, but one last box caught my eye before I could make it to the stairs. Tucked in back in the dark recesses of one of the corners of the basement, the intriguing box was a small little cardboard square about the size of a VCR which had been sticking out to me out of the corner of my eye all day. I actually assumed it could have been a VCR and my brain dreamed up all of the magic of what could have been resting in its mouth, waiting for my nostalgia-starved eyes. An old Care Bears video? Maybe an old Babysitter’s Club one?

The time to open up that potential VCR box was at hand and I was a little disappointed when I opened it up to find not a VCR, but an old-school tape answering machine for a phone. Shit. You can’t watch Care Bears or Babysitter’s Club on an answering machine.

The box was not a complete strike out. I walked up the stairs of the basement and back into the house with an idea in my head and the answering machine in my hand.

I plugged the answering machine into the wall and waited a few moments to see the thing’s sad, little box of a screen with red numbers and broadcast a digital number one, written in blocky red writing.

There was a message waiting for me.