A Father's Love

Chapter 69

Over the next few weeks, the remains of winter were behind them and spring fully settled in Stars Hollow, along with the spring showers April usually presented them with, cancelling one of Shelby's practices. Though the air was still cool and crisp, that didn't stop Shelby from continuing to practice her soccer skills at the park, still enjoying the sport. Aside from soccer, news reached her ears of yet another set of Pokemon games. However, it was a big letdown once she found out the games couldn't be played on her Gameboy Color and Nintendo had moved on to a new handheld console.

Jess had picked up a copy for her when Luke had given him the money from her savings. Not having really any knowledge of the gaming world himself, the young man paid no attention to what the box said, only enough to see it was the new Pokemon games. So when he handed the game to his cousin, and she opened the packaging and removed the cartridge from the box to slide it into her Gameboy, the corners of Shelby's mouth dropped into a frown. Even though the cartridge was half the size of her other games, it was also wider than they were, thus unable to fit.

Jess grabbed the box from where his cousin had tossed it on the couch beside her. Looking inside, he pulled out the instruction manual and skimmed through it. "It looks like there is a new Gameboy, now."

"Is tha' why the box says Gameboy Advance in'tead of Color?" she asked, picking up the box and looking at it for herself.

"Guess so, Scout. Sorry," he told her, sincerely.

The look she gave made it seem like somebody had kicked a puppy or something.

With the table set for dinner, Luke came around the coffee table where Jess was sitting. He sat beside his little buddy, wrapping an arm around her. "I'm sure you'll be able to save up enough money for one," he reassured her.

"Yeah, I know," she replied. "I jus' though' I would ge' to play now."

Luke hugged her to him in one arm. "I'm sorry, kiddo." In his head, he was ranting about Nintendo's ploy to take money out of the parents' wallets, questioning why they had to make it where a person had to buy a whole new system when there wasn't anything wrong with the old one, not understanding the whole "advancing technology" concept. In fact, that was the topic of discussion on his and Nicole's next date, and she had to explain that was the company's business strategy, to keep making better things that would entice kids to keep wanting their products, as well as with other companies. Luke still insisted it was all about money.

So, since then, Shelby's money remained untouched as she earned and saved for a new Gameboy to play her new Pokemon game she now keeps in a shoebox with her Gameboy Color games when she's not playing them. It didn't help Lorelai's birthday was right around the corner and made things harder.

"You can do what we do in our family," Ethan suggested one morning when he and his brother stopped by the diner to ride their bikes to school.

"Wha's tha'?" she asked.

Alan was the one to respond. "We make each other something for their birthday. I bet she'll like it even more if you made her a present."

"And it doesn't even have to be handmade. One time, we wrote our mom a story and acted it out for her," Ethan added, leaning half his body on the edge of the table while standing on his knees, on the chair.

Finally, it annoyed Luke enough to scold the kid. "Ethan, come on. Get off the table. People eat off of that."

"Wouldn't they eat off a plate, not the table?" he pointed out.