36, Day 81 (Written Friday March 2) ~ I can’t play video games anymore. They are too complex, too complicated and require far too much digital dexterity and quick reaction time. I’ve tried playing a few times with my sons, and while I can appreciate the technological advancements, the amazing graphics and realism, I just can’t play them for more than five minutes before I grow bored. I guess you could blame it on the fact that instead of a joystick and one button or a keypad and two buttons, they now have two joysticks, four buttons, four triggers and an endless number of combinations. Or perhaps its simply that I realize talking to a real life girl is way more fun that rescuing a digital princess. But it wasn’t always this way.
Growing up I lived on video games, starting with my Atari at age 8 and reaching full bloom when I got my Nintendo Entertainment System. Mom has a picture of my skinny little rear end in Underoos (remember those?) sitting in front of the tv pre-dawn on Christmas morning playing The Empire Strikes Back on my brand new Atari (thanks again Santa, what a great gift). A few years later I upgraded to the Nintendo (again, Santa, how do you do it?) and Super Mario Brothers. I played it that day and night until my eyeballs burned and begged mom not to make me go to my grandmothers for Christmas night because I had to beat the game before my friends, I had to be the first. She made me go, but I still beat it before my friends (somewhere around 4:00 am). Then it was on to Duck Hunt and that annoying dog that mocked me when I missed.
Along the way there were so many other things about my childhood that I think my kids have missed out on. I grew up in a neighborhood with a ton of other kids. Depending on the season we played basketball, football (full tackle, not the sissy two hand touch or flag stuff), and tennis ball (baseball using a tennis ball...it was a neighborhood and breaking windows meant losing your allowance). If school was out there was an unspoken invitation to meet at whatever field was in season and play whatever sport was in season. We kept up with stats on a spiral notebook and were as famous in our neighborhoods as any pro athlete. There were girls in our neighborhood too, but usually they just served as target practice for our paint ball guns or bottle rockets.
Speaking of bottle rockets, we saved money half a year, just to buy duffle bags full of fireworks on July 4th and New Year’s Eve to have fireworks wars. It was just as stupid and dangerous as it sounds: two teams, hundreds of dollars in fireworks, fire them at each other until they were all gone or somebody got hurt. Yes it was dangerous and dumb, but it was also SO MUCH FUN!!!!
I also loved the summertime freedom of hopping on my bicycle and riding anywhere around town that I wanted to go. A pack of boys cruising through town, eating double cheeseburgers and curly fries at Chew-n-Chat, shooting pool at Sack-n-Pack and renting video tapes and video games at Berry’s Video and then going swimming in a pool, a creek, a pond or a drainage ditch.
Inside was just as much fun. We’d have video game tournaments that lasted for days, nerf basketball games that broke lamps and caved in sheetrock, and wrestled. We would turn off the lights and have a free for all wrestling match where we’d beat the daylights out of each other for five minutes and then turn on the lights, bruised, bleeding and mad, and then head outside to play wiffle ball like nothing had happened.
I don’t do these things anymore, haven’t in a very long time, but maybe I should. What do you remember about your childhood that you wish you could relive?
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