My cousin, whose boys are a bit older than mine, enlightened me the other day about so-called play dates.
She told me that all the kids do at these parentally orchestrated get-togethers, at the current stage, is play each other's video games.
What a bunch of little wastoids, eh?
Yeah, us thirtysomethings had Atari, Intellivision, and ColecoVision to turn our brains into mush....
But these kids today are out of control; make that, THEIR PARENTS are! Who in their right mind would buy their 5 year old a game system? Yet I see this time and again.
Now that I think about it, just imagine how good some of us (West Coast Tom? Slow Rion? PrivateCaller?) would be today, after all that post-pubescent *practice*, at Decathlon!
3 comments:
I received my Nintendo Entertainment System when I was 5 years old. For the next 4 years years, according to my parents, everything was a "Nintendo," even my Sega Genesis. Then, I got a Sega Saturn and everything was a "Sega," for the next 4 years, even my Nintendo 64!
Then the Xbox came out and even though I never had one, all my Nintendos became Xboxes!
My dad still tells the story of how he beat me in Super Mario Bros. (not even sure what that means to him, as it is not really a competitive game) for the first two days I had the system, at which point his 5yo son never lost another video game to him and he just quit playing them at all a few months later. My father has no idea how GOOD his defeat would look on the latest systems!
There was a point in my life where I dreamed about giving my child his first video game system and sharing with him old stories from my "glory days" with my own consoles and PC. But I am of one mind with you on this subject now... video game systems are a waste of a child's youth, time and intelligence. I probably won't allow my kids to have one, at least not until they're old enough to afford one on their own.
But hey, no one said dad couldn't keep a little stash of games privately somewhere in the house and play them when the little ones are asleep!
I was never good at that game. To run fast you had to furiously pound the buttons. I think the only video game I was any good at was Spy Hunter.
It wasn't a button-pounding game....it was the one where you had to oscillate the joystick, back and forth as rapidly as possible.
Decathlon caused many a busted joystick and many a blister....yet it prepared scores for the rigors pubescence!
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