If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. – Frank Lloyd Wright

 

technology has never been my strong suit, to put it mildly. oh, i can open up my laptop with the best of them, and use my cell phone, and text, and email, and write, and listen to music, and even use my electric toothbrush, but when it comes to video games, i realize i am in a totally a one-sided dysfunctional relationship. i consider myself ‘on a need to know and desperate to use level of understanding’ as far as technology goes anyway, and the games really push the envelope. won’t take my word for it? need a bit of evidence? here a just a few examples:

Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born. – Alan Kay

years ago, i was super hyped-up when ‘pong’ came out, one of the very first home video games. i found myself so excited on my first turn playing it, that i snapped the joystick right off of its base. all these years later, my brother is still holding a bit of grudge about this incident, as the game was his dream come true, and my parents also snapped, and said they were not replacing it since ‘we’ broke it so quickly.

when one my daughters was quite young, she told me, (as i was trying to share a mother-daughter quality bonding time with her, by playing video games) – ‘mom, i’m not trying to be mean, but it’s not really fun playing these games with you. it’s kind of boring actually, because you’re sort of slow, and you don’t know the shortcuts and your guys always get killed so fast and you have low points and then you are out and i always win.’  

flash forward to more recent times, apparently i have not made a lot of progress in this area.  i played wii tennis against my son in law, and hit him with my hand held thing. hard. by accident. once again, i was a very enthusiastic player. i felt like i was really on the court. soon after, the ‘tapping’ incident, it flew out of my hand and hit and broke something in the room. i was ‘asked’ to wear the wristband to protect us all after that. 

I play the the Wii without the wrist strap, thug life. – Unknown quote

for my birthday this year, i put ‘one hour of random tech support, (of my choosing), without judgement, snottiness, mocking laughter, or a crabby voice’, on my birthday wish list. coincidentally, all three of my daughters individually decided this was not humanly possible for them, as the conditions i requested were absolutely un-doable. they each said they would rather get me anything else on my list.  

my new strategy is to stay one step ahead of the grand babies, as i can sometimes take them in the games at this point, though one is soon to be six years old, so my short reign may quickly come to an end. i’ve decided that i can cross ‘gamer’ or ‘video designer’ off of my list of potential next careers. but – give me a good game of twister and i will show you who’s boss. and perhaps even do so, without judgement or snottiness or mocking laughter, or a crabby voice, though there is no guarantee. 

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. – Albert Einstein