I am not a gamer. I have never owned any type of video consul in my life. No Nintendo 64, no Game Cube, X-Box or any of the other various types of electronic devices that allows you to live out your dreams of being a small Italian racecar driver or a fanatical killing machine. For some unknown reason, these things never held my interest when I was young. Not growing up in a world of Tetris and Halo, however, has had a number of interesting effects on my life. One is that I have without a doubt THE WORST hand-eye coordination of any moderately intelligent, competent human being. I wish I were exaggerating but this is sadly, not the case. If only I had spent more time testing my reflexes with the soft touch that is required to blow the head off of an alien or round a curve in a high functioning car. Alas, I am forever destined to be the girl everyone is afraid to get in a (real) car with.
The second effect this has had is that I REFUSE; absolutely refuse to participate in any type of party, group gathering or family function that requires me to play one of said video games for fear of jilting embarrassment. Unfortunately this has led to a lifetime of sitting on the sidelines, drinking heavily (tragic I know) while my friends/significant others battle each other in the ultimate showdown of dominance. Instead of relying on a common ground in the world of gaming to get to know my peers I instead had to rely on that other social lubricant we all know and love-alcohol (but only after I was 21 of course).
I digress. One positive thing that HAS come from a lifetime of deprivation in the world of electronics is that it forced my sister and me to creatively come up with interesting alternatives. So instead of mindlessly staring at the TV for hours on end, Rachel and I would make up stories. And believe me, our stories were better than any make believe video game world (SO LAME). Our stories were based on magazines.
That’s right, you heard me. Magazines. And not interesting magazines, like Time or People or even BusinessMoney (oookay maybe that’s not so interesting). Our stories were based upon the khaki and pastel clad men and women of L. L. Bean. Yes, it may have been a clothing magazine to you. But to my sister and me it was a wonderful world full of people showing off their rugged but all-American look just waiting to jump from the glossy pages of the magazine and come to life in the middle of our living room. There were pictures upon pictures of men, women and children climbing and hiking and running and playing till their hearts content. Through them, even in the darkest of winter, we could live in a wonderful outdoor adventureland. We would sit for hours making up classy stories full of mysteries and intrigue. Like the story of the mother and her daughter trapped on the mountainside (snappily dressed of course-there were ample descriptive words used in these stories) waiting for rescue, hoping to outsmart the ravenous mountain lion waiting in the shadows. Or, if it was a Christmas catalog (those were the best gosh darn it!) we would weave splendid tales of family drama and occasionally (If they were advertising pet supplies) stories about regal looking golden retrievers. Believe me, you haven’t really lived until you’ve felt the steady increase of your heart as you wait in anticipation for the mail to arrive, and with it your beloved quarterly magazine. Take that gamers.
So while I may not have had the opportunity and the luxury of practicing my hand-eye coordination and while I don’t have quite the thumb dexterity that my peers have achieved over a lifetime of video game dominance I do have a vocabulary ripe with detailed words and I will never mistake calling an L.L. Bean shirt PINK when it is so clearly Magenta.
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