A Boy and His Gun
RePlayed video games from my youth. I don’t remember them hurting my wrists. It’s almost as if I had incredibly strong wrists as a teenager.
Saturday we went to a family party at a place called Dave and Buster’s
Have you heard about this place?
You have? And you haven’t told me about it before now?
I’m not sure we can remain friends.
For those who haven’t been, it’s basically a restaurant and bar with a giant huge ass vide arcade.
This is where I will live when I win the Powerball. (Note to self: start playing the Powerball if you want to actually win.) I will, of course, then require everyone else to leave, because it is ear shatteringly loud but you do get used to it after awhile.
Being a child of the ’80s, I was thrilled to find some classic video games. I’m talking about Space Invaders and Asteroids, people. Remember when video games were things you played for a few minutes with quarter, instead of massively involved life-altering “Let’s plan all weekend to attack the 47 levels of expansion pack 7 of World of Mysty Zombies?” (Not that we didn’t play these games for hours on end too, but there was a simplicity to it.)
Also, Joust? Still the best game that I love despite not being nearly as good at it as I wish I was. I’m still pretty good at Galaga though.
The Point of All This
The Wife had put The Boy in front of one of those shooting games which ran a demo every few minutes showing how the game was played. The Boy had no idea how to play, and therefore thought when he was playing whenever the demo ran (most kids aren’t very bright, at least not about some things).
I came over and decided that this would be a good opportunity for some father/son male bonding, so I fired up the game for real, we both picked up our bright red plastic shotguns and started hunting animals.
It really was quite fun, once you get the hang of it.
A few animals would come on the screen, you were supposed to aim for one kind but not the other, and you had to hit them in fairly specific places in order to get points. Each scene had 4-5 target animals and then it would show how well you did and start showing you the next scene.
At every one of these “intermissions” — every.single.one— my cherubic little 6.75 year-old son would raise a fist in the air and cry:
“There will…be blood… tonight!”
I have absolutely no idea where he heard this, but it’s pretty much the funniest thing I’d ever seen or heard.
