Grieving Roblox Circa 2016

Maddie Tran

I’d like to begin with an anecdote, a confession of sorts: When I was in third grade, I would wake up to an alarm every day at 5 a.m. to play Roblox High School on my iPad. I would play until 7 a.m. when I had to get ready for school. 

I’ve rarely touched the game since then, but I still remember the baby-teal-aquamarine color I painted my house, all the badges I collected, the soft soundtrack that rang the symphony to those early mornings in my bed and the blissful ignorance of a world in which I had no idea what high school would actually be like. 

As corny as it sounds, it was somewhat surreal to realize that the “roles” I had adopted as a third grader were in fact not fabricated positions I could pick at the whim of a button, but rather, stages of life I would take on one by one with every passing year. 

Now, at age 18, I can finally assume the red button, the role of a senior. 

Perhaps there’s something in the air; maybe the stinging fog of nostalgia is blinding me, and I’m only remembering the romantic parts of those early mornings on my iPad.

Or perhaps in remembering my memories of pretending to be a high schooler I was anticipating the nostalgia that would come as I actually began to experience those memories play out in real life. 

One day, my experiences in high school as a second semester senior will just be fleeting memories, roped in the same category as those iPad-driven mornings and every other emotion I felt in third grade, lost to the ribbon of time and treated as something I could never dream of returning to. 

Maybe it was the innocence of it all, maybe just nostalgia of wanting to go back to a simpler time, but I do miss it.