Pick 41 - Video Games

I try not to be a curmudgeon. I try very hard.

However, sometimes the limits of my patience are tested, and it appears that the world is conspiring, in my later years, to turn me into a grumpy, disapproving stereotype – the kind of person that, as a boy, I tried to avoid.

To illustrate, I recently visited my grandchildren. Usually, they are happy to see me – and I want to keep it that way.

However, what proved to be my trial was The Game – a video game, of course. My sensitive, intelligent  granddaughter had begun to play it as I was sitting comfortably on the living room couch.

Understand: this was not Pac-Man, which I could have tolerated. No. It was a shockingly realistic, nightmarish gore fest which, I was told, is called Silent Hill.

This fictitious location featured dark, fog draped streets strewn with mangled dead bodies. Lumbering, deformed creatures emerged from the mist, necks tilted at unnatural angles, heads wobbling. One of these gurgling, hissing, slurping monstrosities was coming toward my grand-daughter – at least the character she was controlling on the screen – as her thumbs twitched furiously in self-defense.

Here, among other things, was my problem: When my granddaughter was even younger, she used to have terrible nightmares that woke her up at night and reduced her to a trembling heap – and sometimes even to tears.

There are so many ways to enjoy life, I thought. There are not only libraries full of fascinating literature to explore; there is the refreshing lure of the outdoors, and so much natural beauty that goes unappreciated – not to mention the magic of imagination. Instead of enjoying these wonders, my grand-daughter had chosen to sit in a dimly lit living room and play a game that terrified her – she had chosen a nightmare over some of the best things life has to offer.

My grand-daughter turned to me. “Look,” she said. “Did you see that? I got him.” She was clutching the controller so hard, I thought she might break it.

I forced a tolerant smile, and hoped it did not turn into the curmudgeonly grimace I felt trying to form. I had decided not to ruin her fun.

Then, something happened. The vision on the screen was indescribable – a grotesque perversion of nature ripping into something else with malicious, and possibly even sadistic, intent – in an orgy of death and violence surpassing any horror I had ever seen. And now it was advancing toward my grand-daughter.

It was too much. I felt the curmudgeon inside me rising to take control; it had an entire speech prepared, and I was about to deliver it for him. Just as the creature found its way to my daughter, a voice from another room interrupted: “Supper is ready.”

“Hold on mom,” my grand-daughter said. “I’m coming.” She paused the game, freezing the creature before it could do any damage. She set down the controller, got up, then smiled charmingly – and beautifully – at me. “Come on, Grandpa,” she said. And then she was gone.

For a second, I could not move, or breathe. When the monster had paused, something inside me had paused as well. As I stared at the newly static screen, a flicker of understanding had arisen.

This was not the nightmare of her childhood. This was not any fear she dealt with everyday. Here, and perhaps here alone, she could put her fears on pause. These monsters were no threat to her. The game allowed her an extraordinary power – a way to confront her nightmares in a way that was completely safe.

If only real life granted this, I thought. Being able to actively confront fears without true danger was a hidden value – and I had missed it.

I imagined a world in which everyone could freeze time when bad things happened and then, go to eat supper. I thought I could appreciate this world a bit now, with its frozen monster, a place where my granddaughter would never feel helpless; where the threats were not real – where she ventured bravely toward the monsters, rather than waiting for them to come to her.

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