I used to play Quake with my dad.
Actually, it’s funny now that I think about it. My dad used to rag on my brothers and I so often when we were kids because we were always playing video games instead of hanging around outside.
I remember right after my parents divorced my dad moved in to this weird, cavernous tract home in Newbury Park where everything was white. Everything. The house was white stucco, the front door was white, all the walls were white, the carpet was white, the kitchen cabinets were white, my bed frame was white. It was a terrifying, uncomfortable place. Trent and I wasted multiple weeks worth of hours on Diablo II while we lived there because there wasn’t much else to do. It made my dad absolutely livid but in our view he didn’t have much of an argument. It was his fault we were there, after all, and we couldn’t help that there was nothing to do except watch the 1,000 hour long Dune miniseries on VHS.
There only reason I started playing video games in the first place was because of my dad. I used to sit on his lap while he played Doom or steal his work laptop on long flights to play this really awful bumper car maze game that came with the computer. My dad showed me how the internet worked, helped me set up my first AOL account (jinxy232) and bought me first copy of Pokemon.
Now that I think on it I realize that most of my most cherished childhood memories are in some way related to video games.
I used to work (as much as one can work in the third grade) at a children’s theater on Mercer Island, mostly changing sets in between acts and waiting in the wings paralyzed by the stultifying silence while the older kids performed what I’m sure were very interesting renditions of Anne of Green Gables. One of the kids, a boy a couple of years older than me, had a copy of this new Gameboy called “Poke-man”. Sometimes when the boredom threatened to become overwhelming he’d let me play, but only ever the first few gyms. Pokemon Red only allowed one save file and since I couldn’t save over his I played the first gym over and over again for hours and hours in the dark, endlessly fascinated by these loyal little digital friends who would fight and faint in my name so that I might claim the glory what was due to me.
Even now, what, 17 years later? Bubblelicious gum only tastes like Donkey Kong Country.
(Source: lowinterest)
via whatfreshheckisthis
