Bless my dear Middle Boy. He has an imagination and could talk your ear off telling you about it – that is for sure. Did you know that you could create a make believe video game? Now I totally know that a child’s imagination can create all kinds of adventures. I sailed the seas on my very own ship (sitting on top of the monkey bars), performed amazing tricks soaring through the air as a trapeze artist in a circus (swinging from the rings and the bar on the swing set), and I even prowled through jungles is search of the rare and dangerous white Bengal tiger (sneaking through tall grass and weeds in search of our napping Samoyed).
But I still am quite baffled that you can play a video game, while not playing a video game. Middle Boy has created at least two now. After school when I pick him up he tells me all about it. He levels up, he gets points, and sadly enough his good guy died yesterday.
Maybe I’m just an unknowing individual in the land of video games and that is why it is so surprising to me. Growing up we really weren’t allowed to play video games. We grew up playing my dad’s Atari system and the computer games we were allowed to play were classics like Oregon Trail, Create-A-Story with the Muppets, Lemonade Stand and Mario Brothers Typing. No Nintendo, No Sega Genesis, No PlayStation. In fact, I get really bored with video games. (Or maybe that's just my 20 second attention span.) It probably doesn’t help that in college I had a boyfriend that was much more interested in sitting in front of a TV/computer screen playing games instead of paying attention to me. But that’s my history with video games. I still can’t get past the 2nd level of Super Mario Brothers without dying. I totally crash my car in Super Mario Cart. And, I really get bored bowling on the Wii.
When I moved in I realized that video games ruled all four of my boys. Books were pretty much not picked up as much and kids cried when they lost, or couldn’t play, or didn’t get to play. I sat my fiancé down and made some video game rules, that he too had a hard time trying to stick too at first. I am proud to say that they have all been rehabilitated. Now video games are hardly ever played, more books are being read by all of them, and not as many crying fits. It’s become more of a once-in-a-while privilege to play than a necessity.
Back to the topic, did you know you could imagine a make-believe video game? I’ve tried to grasp this. Then I realized that yes, I guess you can. When I think of video games I think of kids sitting on their butts and staring mindlessly at a glaring screen with their tongues sticking out of the corner of their mouths. Middle Boy has created Quest Kitty. Kittens of different colors (he’s Orange Kitty) fight bosses (I guess this is universal for some major bad guy?) and level up. I think you’re supposed to eventually rescue a princess kitty or something. Lately he’s been telling me about “Make Your Own Boss.” This game I still don’t quite understand. I guess you create the gnarliest, nastiest, meanest boss (still kind of lost but OK) and you fight him. As I mentioned, his good guy died yesterday against this boss. But since it’s a video game, I guess he gets to use up an extra life and try again?
Oh well, I guess as long as he’s outside physically playing video games instead of sitting in front of a TV for hours upon hours a day playing video games, I really can’t complain. Maybe instead of getting angry and bottling it up I can go out and make up a make believe video game and fight off the evil, nasty Jane and save the world from her evil idiotic destruction. That’s got to be stress relieving, right? I wouldn’t look too crazy doing round-house kicks Chuck Norris style out in the middle of the park if I have work-out clothes on, right? Especially if I drop down into a Yoga stretch afterward.
Hrm … Yoga stretch. I think I’d rather go do that right about now.
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4 comments:
I remember playing on the Atari - the graphics were two lines and a dot - which represented a tennis ball and two bats, it went beep (hit), beep (hit), bop (if you missed). At that time I couldn't even have imagined a video game full stop, so to try to comprehend imagining an imagine video game - what a smart kid you have! You could always channel his creative streak and get him to draw the levels (save it for a rainy day!)
Mrs. M! You're genius! Maybe that's why I have such a hard time envisioning a video game make believe game. All the video games I loved! were Atari (Centipede, Ms. Pac Man). And oh yeah, the boys sat down last night to draw out characters to a new game they were creating. They kept talking about levels and points and I was so lost. Too funny, Middle Boy told me about another game he created today when I picked him up too.
At least he is using his imagination which in turn exercises his brain.
Kids and some teenagers can be anybody they want and do any game they want within their bounds, including video games. That makes them cute!!! It also inspires us adults to somehow do the same.
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