This story is the beginning of a positive conclusion to a much bigger story. So I'll start at the beginning and rush you to now. I was born in Louisiana and lived there until I was 17. Due to a falling out with my mother, I had no choice but to move here to Kentucky to live on my own. For 7 years after that I had absolutely no contact with my family. For a long time I did not feel bad about this, until I would think of my little brother. We were very close and we were both extremely into video games. I remember taking turns for hours on end playing Crash Bandicoot and Medievil, staying up late watching me play Resident Evil and Dino Crisis (too hard for him at the time), and even playing each other in Twisted Metal. There is even a video of us going ballistic opening our PS2 on Christmas morning that our parents wanted to send to a home video show.
After a year of living on my own I tried calling and writing with no replies. They had moved and had no way to send me any contact information. At the time I looked at this as the end. I was to be on my own and my friends will be my family. And then Katrina happened and I could do nothing but watch the television and cry because I had no way of knowing if they were ok. If I had a car at the time I would probably have driven there myself and brought them here to safety. But being a teenager working minimum wage trying to keep up with a small apartment was rough, and all I could do was just hope they were ok.
Then a couple of years later, I finally created a social networking site for myself and within a few months I get a message. It's from my little brother. He even has to ask if its really me because it's been so long it would be hard to recognize. We start messaging back and forth. First I find out that we are both basically into the same music, which really made me happy. But not as happy as when I found out that he is still into gaming and we both have PS3s. We instantly added each other and found out we both have Warhawk. I could have even played with him already and never would have known. Today we play Killzone 3 and LBP religulously together. In Little Big Planet he is always the first to play my levels. We send each pother messages over the ps3 constantly, so much in fact that we have become pros at typing with the controller. But every now and then I'll get a message from his ps3 that says "Mom loves and misses you, please write". Come to find out he told my mother our secret that we've had contact and she sent the messages herself. And every time I read that message, I feel the warmth of her voice and feelings I havent felt in almost a decade. I'm beginning to realize how frivolous this whole thing is. Family is something I took for granted and instead of playing games with my brother from a thousand miles away, I could be right there with him.
So now after much inner debate, I now have on my coffee table a letter to my mother attempting to rekindle our relationship, and a copy of the new twisted metal to send my brother so we can play together until mom and I work things out. I look forward to the day I can play with him in person, and show him how amazing God of War because somehow he's never played. It's starting to feel like that day is coming soon.
I don't see how a lot of this could have happened without playstation 1 2 and 3. So thank you Sony, you have connected two brothers, and maybe an entire family.
