Your nephews better fess up, cos that did not hapen on its own (unless you've got like, poltergeist or something. A particularly vicious one, I mean who would do that to a trusty old scanner?)
It reminds me so much of mine. Mine is also paralell and noisy and slow. But it was a good scanner, dammit. Of course, it don't work on Vista, heck, not even XP, so I can't use it anymore, it's just sitting there...
It's not wrong what you feel. I bought my PS2 with my very first paycheck and I always say that in case of emergency, the first thing I'll do is take it and run.