prepares fingers for typing up a novel
Ok, I’ll try to sum this up as much as possible but in the long run, yoyoing was a huge part of my later childhood. It started when my cousin got this cheap plastic party favor yoyo for suffering a painful dental treatment (or as they say, being a good boy). My cousin and I were doing the gravity pull, seeing who can do it the longest. That evening was grocery shopping night and my mom saw that we were playing with this cheap toy for the longest time so she bought us each a full-sized Imperial-shaped yoyo. Too bad it wasn’t Duncan however. This seemed to be a short lived fad though as we quickly got tired of dribbling by the time the night ended.
About a week later, we went to a friend’s party where he was messing with a Yomega Brain. I had seen these things in catalogs before but didn’t know how they worked other than being a yoyo ball ripoff. When he was doing his thing, I noticed that it was ‘stalling’ at the end of the string, then coming back up. Right there I was amazed. I walked up and asked to see it and try it. No dice however but he did tell me where he got it.
The following day we were all going to the mall which sold those throws. After heading to the Imaginarium store and finding it, I showed it to my parents. After seeing the $12 price, they denied it and said to wait and see what my birthday brings. Bummed, I left with my cousin and headed to KB Toys. With $5 in my pocket and hearing how Duncans were the best, I spotted a shiny red Imperial and bought one of those. I got my string cut to size and began to dribble. However I noticed that when I dropped it, it spun at the end. The ‘magic’ of the brain yoyo was then debunked when I figured out how to overhand throw and get it to sleep. I still wanted to get the Brain but lived off the Imperial for a while. While walking through the rest of the mall, I just continued practicing and before I knew it I was walking the dog and even figured out Rock the Baby. Eventually for my birthday (about 3 weeks later) I got the Yomega Brain.
Hype dies down immediately after. A couple months later, I see a kid at school with a cheap ‘freebie’ yoyo, trying to figure out how to use it. I showed him how to throw and the following day I smuggled my Yomega to school. Little did I know, I was bound to start a major boom on the school yard. Following day, the rest of my friends bought Duncans and learned until the yard attendant came up and stopped us. Bummed we wrote a petition and were successful. We got a designated yoyo zone on the yard and we threw, learned tricks, etc. The end of the year finale: my teacher buys a box full of Duncans and we did this little physics program Duncan had. After doing a couple experiments with gravity and flywheels, we watched the Duncan How to YoYo video featuring Arnie Dixon…the video with the cheesy music video at the beginning. After the video was over, we spent the last half hour out on the yard practicing what we learned on the video. That summer, I hit up the local (now closed) toy store and snagged a bunch of different yoyos being a Fireball, Technic, and some more Duncans. This was all just before the major 1999 boom.
High school time: Pokemon’s cool, Magic the Gathering, etc. I ditch the yoyo and jump on the Magic bandwagon. Sorry yoyos!
2009: My birthday’s coming. My parents buy an Imperial as a gag gift for me. After a couple throws, I had this urge to get back on it. That weekend I bought a Mosquito. After a while, I stop until the following year when my niece comes home from school with a NED yoyo. She heard I could do tricks so I grabbed my Skeeter and showed her some. It all came back. I had an urge to pick up a better yoyo and ended up snagging a FH2010. From there, I just stuck with it and here we are today.
(of mine)