The Games We Play

I'd like to issue a general warning, here:

If I get one more "Marvel: Avengers Alliance" app request on Facebook, IT IS GOING TO GET UGLY UP IN HERE.

I use Facebook for keeping up with people. And there are so many people to keep up with. 

SO. MANY. PEOPLE.

I barely have time to check in with close friends + family after work, and to scan my Google Reader for interesting new recipes! and drama! and whatever else people post on blogs!

But, as far as I can tell, in twenty five years I have never once given off the vibe that I would be the foggiest bit interested in using Facebook for any type of computer game (not fake-farming, fake-rollercoastering, or fake-superheroing) or that I would be any good at it.

Growing up, we weren't allowed to play many computer games, which led to one of the first times when I let down the family in a significant way. My mom's distant cousin had met a girl, and he called to say that he wanted us to come visit her, and my mom tacked on a warning passed on by my grandma, "He really wants us to make a good impression."

What she meant was: this distant cousin's significant other had a daughter, who was my age, and it would be my responsibility to make her feel like joining our extended family was the most advantageous thing for her present and future happiness. Accordingly, we all loaded up into my grandfather's mini-van and made an eight-hour trek to our cousin's house, where we unloaded and I came face-to-face with my new suggested relative.

"We bought plastic cups for everyone," my cousin said, "It will keep everybody separate, you know." His girlfriend chuckled at this, LIKE IT WAS THE FUNNIEST THING SHE HAD EVER HEARD. This put major pressure on me, because he obviously liked her. I had to make sure that I did everything right with this cousin girl.

"Jane has gorgeous handwriting," my grandma said, "She'll write our names on the cups with a Sharpie."

I bravely grabbed the cups, hand shaking, and my cousin's girlfriend's daughter stared at me while I did. She was pretty, and was wearing multiple head-bands. Like all girls attending middle-school in the 1990's, her name was Megan. I did all of the other names first, and when I could finally put it off no longer, I wrote hers tentatively and held it out to her.

She didn't take it. "With an 'H'," she said.

I stared at the word on the cup. "H"? Where was an 'H' supposed to go in that name? I considered it a moment, felt the over-eager eyes of the cousins and everybody on me, and tentatively added an H to the end of the letters already written on the cup, then held it out to her.

MEGANH.

This did not produce the result I expected. Meganh laughed, swept her hair back into a pony-tail in one grand motion, and suggested that we play cars in the living room.

"Um, ok," I said.

Nods of approval from the adults followed me as I went into the living room, where it was pitch-black. Meganh handed me a game controller. "Here," she said, "I'm Car Two."

Immediately after this, she sat cross-legged (I followed suit) and I was trying to use a game controller to steer a computer car.

This was a completely new experience, AND IT WAS AN EPIC FAIL.

I crashed within 10-12 seconds of each new round, and Meganh looked at me with greater and greater frustration after each passing round.

"You're not even TRYING!" she finally told me. "You don't have to let me win just because everyone is trying to be all nice about my mom dating your uncle."

"Cousin," I said.

"Stop letting me win," she said.

After this public humiliation, my grandmother presented us with three computer games the following Christmas, and -- when my mom seemed claustrophobic when she saw them -- Grandma used the magic words, "THEY'RE EDUCATIONAL!"

After that, it was settled.

The three games were indeed educational, if you wanted to

a.) fly commercial / fighter jets (Flight Simulator III)

b.) escape starvation on a cross-country conestoga journey (The Oregon Trail), or

c) build a civilization (The Age Of Empires: Demo Version)

These all ran on what I can best recall was a hybrid between Windows 95 and MSDos. The flight simulator required a joystick, and a bored-sounding computerized voice would call out instructions:

"Pull up."

My brother and I would yank on the joystick.

"Pull up."

There were disjointed graphics on the screen, displaying ants for people on some distant horizon.

"PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP!"

No matter how many times we crashed that plane, I never became accustomed to the moment when the dull computer lady's voice became urgent and final.

"PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP!"

We would crash after that, in a ball of blackness, and the computer would re-boot to Windows 95 while my heart slowed back to its normal rate.

The computer game's absolute incompatibility with our skill level seemed to secretly please my mother. "We'll do better next time!" I assured her, "I think this is the program they use for ACTUAL fighter pilots. You have to be as good as a real pilot."

But we were not as good as a real pilot, and eventually we made our way into The Oregon Trail, where a series of folk songs played away cheerfully while catastrophes unfolded on-screen and the program required us to make important decisions regarding the future of our fake computer family: "Sally has been bit by a snake; do you want to purchase medicine for her?" "Your food supply has been depleted; do you want to reduce your intake TO THE DEATH-DIET TO MAKE SURE THAT YOUR CHILDREN DON'T STARVE?"

One of our little friends came over, and he knew cheat-codes for The Oregon Trail. We had never heard of cheat-codes before, and we watched, mesmerized, as he typed in strange characters, hit keys simultaneously, and accessed secret menus.

Unfortunately, he was a bit of a morbid child, and most of his preferred cheat codes involved killing off his computer children through vicious communicable diseases.

The Age of Empires: Demo Version seemed the most promising of the lot, because it was hard to mess up. Little computerized people ran around here and there, working on their own in a graphic re-creation of the stone age. The game had its own doctors, who would find sick people and heal them through unintelligible mumblings, and had priests who, through similar utterings, would proselytize unsuspecting converts to whatever religion they pleased. Eventually, though, the game required too little skill and, like our forefathers from the stone age who managed to make a world for themselves by self-governance, my brother and I abandoned our little computer and ran outside to imaginitive games of our own making.