Breaking The Spell

I WAS AMAZED when I played my first video game, "Pong" I think it was called, a square dot bouncing horizontally across the TV screen, in 1967. I was twelve years old, percipient, and impressionable. The high tech enthralled me, as did the implications for the future. Even then I could discern that video games were her to stay, and would become sophisticated, popular, expensive, and seductive. At some point I decided to stay away from them, knowing that my parents were not going to spend money on them, and that I had other things to do, like spend time outside. The decision held. I was vaguely aware of Pac man, dungeons and dragons, and the others as I avoided my way through the eighties and nineties, the era of the first great video game boom. I was never a participant. Now I suppose the level of technological sophistication has gone beyond my most imaginative imaginations, and that people are online with holograms, interaction, and heaven knows what else. Not long ago our senior center signed up for a Wii bowling tournament, and was one player short. They came to me, imploring. Probably my youthful athleticism, charm, and rugged good looks caught the attention of the other team members. My athleticism failed to manifest, and our eighty year olds couldn't pick up the slack, and their eighty olds kicked our eighty year old tail. But it was good fun, as I knew it would be. I tried trash talking, and when that didn't produce results, I made sure I was the first to congratulate the winners, our opponents in every instance. During my brief pre tournament futile refusal phase, I weakly employed my standard "I don't do video games" ploy, which obviously had no impact. Lady assured me that Wii bowling is no video game. A technical reality aside, common sense succumbed to eighty year old feminine charm, and I played, and enjoyed it. In a parallel universe, I made the same sort of decision regarding social media, namely, not to do it. Another seductive drug, I could sense. I repeated my video game scenario, scoped out the scene, foresaw the forthcoming addictive avalanche, and scrammed. Chat rooms were my pong. I enjoyed them, but saw the trap in time to get out while I still could. My Facebook page lies dormant, much to the annoyance of friends I have never met. I neither tweet, retweet, twitter, nor take pictures of myself for self promotion and ego enhancement. I feel free. But who knows? had pong and chatrooms not gone extinct, forty years apart, only to be supplanted by more sophisticated forms, I might yet be sitting permanently ensconced in front of a screen, surrounded by a pile of empty pizza boxes at my feet, I'm ight weight three hundred pounds with high cholesterol and blood pressure, bouncing a blip back and forth, and multitasking in a romance chat room.