A letter from May 25th, 2020

You arrive at school early on a Monday morning. You walk into your elementary school with a hop in your step. When you enter the halls there is one word you keep faintly hearing, “Minecraft”. You say hi to one of your friends, he says with a grin on his face “Wussup bro! Did you hear about that new game Minecraft? My older brother showed it to me last night! You gotta come over and play it with me today!” Your face lights up and you agree to hang out after school to try it out. You get home and run over to the couch and throw your backpack down and yell “Dad I’m going over to ______’s house to play this new game! I’ll be home before dinner!” You leave without waiting for an answer. You start walking to your friend’s house. Your feet start moving faster and you start to sprint. You run up the driveway and press in the doorbell. _____’s mom comes and greets you at the door and invites you in. “_____ is in the basement,” she says with a grin as you run down the stairs. He throws you the controller and shows you how to get split-screen. You start pressing random buttons and finally learn how to move and break and place blocks. Your friend tells you how to play and shows you the basics. He mentions something about an ender dragon, you give him a weird look and he tells you everything about how to beat the game and all the complicated stuff. You play with him past dinner, your dad comes over and tells you its time to come home. You grin at your friend and say “That was fun!”. As your walking out the door he shouts to you “I’ve heard you can get it on your iPod too!!!” You say goodbye and leave your friend’s house. Your dad asks you what you guys did. “We played Minecraft!” you said while smiling ear to ear. You tell your dad all about it on the walk home. Once you ate dinner and finished your chores you rushed upstairs to find your iPod resting on your bed. You power it on and your fingers move faster than the speed of light, you type in “Minecraft” in the Appstore. You see an icon of a grass block with the word “Minecraft” on it. You click on it and realize its free. You run down the stairs to find your dad and have him put in the password so you could download it. After it’s done downloading you open the app. You press the button the says “Singleplayer” and you hear a quite click noise. You create a new world. The loading screen appears. You wait. You spawn on an island with a couple of trees and some animals. You remember what your friend told you about needing to gather wood first. You start punching the nearest tree. There’s a knock on your door. You panic and through your iPod under your pillow and look at the clock it’s 10 PM. Your mom walks in and your pretend you’re asleep. After she leaves, you wait a couple of seconds to make sure she’s really gone. You grab your iPod and finish punching the tree. You finally get bored and decide to explore outside of the island. You gather your stuff and jump in the water. You press the forward and jump button until your fingers are numb and it’s turning night. After what feels like an eternity you find land. You punch the air and celebrate quietly in your room trying not to wake your parents. You see monsters and panic. You dig a hole in the ground and cover the top with a grass block and hide until morning. You played until you passed out at 2 AM. Almost every day after this you played Minecraft on your iPod after school, either creative or survival. The memories you made playing with your friends. That time you spent forever making a Mcdonald’s and then those random kids burned it down and you cried for hours. The Pokemon rink you made, that one world where you spawned and tamed a million wolves. The treehouse you made. That underground city. That huge castle you worked on that you thought looked amazing because you only used diamond blocks. The world you made to hunt for Herobrine. All the pixel art you made. When you defeated the ender dragon in creativity because you got too lazy to do it in survival. When you would fly around looking for different landmarks. All the memories you made from Minecraft. You treasure those forever, the good and the bad. You miss those times, you know you do. Back when you didn’t have to worry about doing well in school, what you wanted to be when you grew up, you didn’t have to care what people thought of you or what you looked like. You miss those times so much and would do anything to get them back, but you can’t get them back, their gone.