Rank Amateur Gaming

One of my son's friends, Jeff, delivered a speech recently at their high school graduation ceremony in which he described his experiences as a player on his school's basketball team during his senior year. Including the fact that he had never played basketball before going out for the team! He described his ability in basketball as "awful", but also stated that his experience on the team was the highlight of his school career. I identify with the outlook presented by this thoughtful young man, for there are areas that I would like to explore in my life for which I would equally qualify as a "rank amateur". One of these areas is the vast field of video gaming.

Although I'm sure that there are folks my age who are adept at video games, I think that being a part of the video gaming culture is basically a matter of which generation one is a part of. It wasn't until I was 20 that I actually played my first video game, the very simple Pong. And I never got much further than that. I remember playing, about twenty years ago, an Atari game called Qix, that my brother-in-law had on his old Atari system. And I got pretty adept at it, I'm proud to say. But when my son, and later, daughter, began their forays into the world of video games, I could not keep up with them, not even remotely! I'm not even sure which video game systems they are using now. I do remember, though, attempting (with mixed success) to get through the various stages in Sonic II (then on Genesis) during the mid-nineties. And later, I had some fun with the spin-off game Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. But that aside, I have gone absolutely nowhere with video games. Until now. I have been inspired by Jeff's speech to join the ranks of other rank amateurs in their fields and have purchased a 99-cent used video game, Project Gotham Racing, which I will attempt to "get good at". I am sincerely hoping that my daughter will help to mentor me through the video gaming process and will not laugh at my pathetic failures too much! There may be a danger to me doing this, though: I've seen that playing video games can become highly addictive for some!