Not far from our apartment is a trendy computer repair shop. It's housed in a loft-like space that looks like a dot.com office from 1999. The walls are lined with Macs and cables and hard drives, but a ping-pong table casually squats in the center of the store. The hipsters who work there have put posters of Angus Young and the Lost Boys on the walls, but what my daughter likes best about the place is the video game.
Right up front by the windows is a table arcade game, the kind where two players can sit across from each other and take turns playing Ms. Pac Man, Frogger, or Galaga. It's a total throwback to what I used to play in pizza parlors and bowling alleys when I was a kid, except without the stains of countless greasy fingers and spilled cokes or the untouchable high scores.
I had to go there a couple of times to get our Mac checked out, and since there was a playground nearby I'd usually take my daughter with me. While I talked with the techies about why my !&%$#$@ wireless would never !&%$#$@ work, I'd sit my daughter down at the table and let her watch the endlessly recylcing demos. It wasn't long before she asked if she could play.
My daughter is three. She has the hand-eye coordination of a cymbal-banging monkey toy with Parkinsons. I was happy to give her quarters, but I knew that about 7 seconds later she'd have lost her third consecutive ship/frog/Pac-Man and wouldn't understand why she was once again looking at an options screen. It was my responsiblity--my duty--as a parent to help her.
So each time we'd visit the store I'd bring an extra handful of quarters with me, just like when I was heading to Skatetown in fourth grade. After I did my bidness with tech support I'd pull my daughter onto my lap, gently place my hand on hers, and guide her through her preliminary Jedi training.
You may recall that the controls on these machines are fairly rudimentary. There's a stick with a big white ball on the top, a button on each side to fire (lefties welcome!) and two equally large buttons to select one or two players. The simplicity of this system is part of it's magic, but it lacks on the nuance of the X-B-Y-A-left trigger-right-trigger-etc-etc chaos we have today. I found, to my dismay, that I had retained none of the skills I built up in the arcades of my youth, and the endless hours of COD4, Splinter Cell, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance had set my expectations for system responsiveness unfairly high. It's safe to say I was better than my daughter, but not by much.
She wasn't helping, mind you. She didn't grasp the concept that running into cars is a bad thing on Frogger. Her shooting strategy for Galaga was to tap a button, then look up to see if it did anything. And to her, Pac Man is all about eating, not avoiding, ghosts. So as I'd try to cut left or right, her tiny hand beneath mine was straining to do the opposite. Not consciously, but in the same reflexive ways in which three year olds throw balls: spastically, wildly, and forcefully.
Despite our poor showing, we would always have fun. She'd yell out "WE WON! HOORAY!" regardless of the outcome, at least until I caught her repeating my "D'oh!" when a diving alien would nick our dodging ship. Soon she'd ask me if we were going to "the video game store," a question which inevitably raised eyebrows with the suspicious missus (which I think shall be the name of my new band). And this on top of her begging to play Rock Band, although we're only allowed to play "Hungry Like the Wolf" or "Roxanne" (with her on vocals with an unplugged microphone, of course). Her indoctrination into gaming has begun!
So as a precautionary measure I dropped some Microsoft Points on Pac Man Championship Edition. Who knows when the day will come when her little hands can reach the thumbsticks? I'd hate to miss that opportunity. It's my responsiblity.--my duty==to be there when it happens.
And to be ready, which means I need to practice. A lot. I'll chalk that up to good parenting.
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