I loved a few Nintendo Game Boy games when I was a little girl, namely Duck Tales, Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Tom and Jerry. I played them nonstop from the ages of 10 to 12, then I was done and had my cousin sell my 1991 Game Boy in France where she lived and could get a good price.
When my husband and I were first dating he was really into video games. After a childhood where his father refused him any gaming systems, my husband went game-crazy in college buying every possible system from Atari to XBox. I accepted video games as a fact of modern life when dating a young adult male. My husband and his friends loved "shoot 'em up games," but the only one I would play was a music and rythme game called Space Channel 5. I was really great at it though.
As we grew up more and more, video games were less and less a part of our lives. I didn't miss it. I enjoyed having evenings going out to restaurants, taking walks, and playing the board games that replaced the video ones. Occasionally we would play video games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero which were fun since they were rythme and music, plus they were group oriented. After Big Bro was born the video games really faded away. Six months later we moved to a new house and the game systems were never even unpacked.
It was a 6 year era free from the clutter of game consoles, cartridges and tangled wires. Ahhhh.
Now Big Bro is 6 and discovered Pokémon. It started slowly with a couple cards given to him by a friend on the bus. Then it was a small pack of Pokémon cards and a card holder for his birthday. Then my husband came home with packages of cards and the boards so they could play for real. Then Big Bro was rummaging in a closet and found the Pokémon Puzzle League game cartridge for Nintendo 64. Next thing we know, the Nintendo 64 is set up and both my kids are battling with Pokémon and Nintendo franchise characters.
"Can we play a video game?" Lil Sis (now 4) asks. "I love video games!"
"Can we play Pokémon?" Big Bro asks. "Dr. Mario?"
Usually my husband is in charge when they play for 10 or 15 minutes. When I'm in charge it devolves into fights over who is Pikachu and "stop attacking me!!" Even though that's the whole point of the freaking game.
Grrr. I hate video games.
"They will only be allowed to play Pokémon, right?" I ask my husband. "It's a slippery slope."
A slippery slope indeed.
Make peace with your past. History has a tendency to repeat itself. Those darn video games are circling back around again.
