If I deign to walk past my roommate's bedroom door I would venture to see her (my daughter Laura) on her computer, headset on as she stares at two large monitors. Her fingers flying, her entire body leaning over, now forward, and the swearing - - MY GOSH, you'd think she was her brother! Every other word is unprintable unless you do print it and everyone comments on how you printed it; I won't print it here, but you get the picture. She's a gamer. Laura is one helluva horse trainer in real life, having the skills, training, and talent to heave 1200 pound animals around or make them do what she wants with only a stern look of her eye and a curl of her lip; OK, she throws in a grunt or growl type noise too, but they move! She's equally vicious on the game(s) she plays and I can tell she's being murdered, slaughtered, killed, or otherwise destroyed by someone as equally creative in their own skills -- "Who are you playing against kid?" I ask. "Your damn daughter!" comes her retort - - my answer; of course she is. Caity is just a hair ruder than Laura; good thing I'm not over at my other daughter's house at this moment, and I'm sort of hoping the grandkids are either out of earshot or they are at school where they don't have to witness taking place. I'm not going to lie, I find it fascinating that the two of them still "play" well together past the age of 30.
Let's see - - could I be a gamer? I've never been one. Even when Astroids came out and you could only play it on arcade games at 7-11, I never put in more than one quarter and played one time until I died, which didn't usually take very long. I just never cliqued you'd say, with gaming. I either felt that I was really bad at it or maybe I just didn't want to lose a quarter knowing it wouldn't last me more than three minutes anyway - - I'm Scottish. I don't spend money if I don't need to spend money. I will spend it, I do in fact spend a great deal of it, but usually on horse-related things - - or horses themselves. I'm not afraid to spend money.
You know what I would spend money on actually? I would spend so much money on buying groceries! Yes, I would! I could and I would spend much more than a quarter at a time on a game that let me pick up and pick out various grocery items! Oh my gosh, I could walk up and down each aisle at the virtual store. I could see shelves and shelves of products, goods, and wares! I could read labels for extra points. I could price compare and if the gaming engineers were cool enough to add a few extras such as in-game demonstrators who passed out food items allowing me to test the taste, texture, and smell of different foods that would be awesome. I guess for the smell part you'd have to just take the word of the game itself since your monitor probably wouldn't produce anything close to garlic or cinnamon - - not yet, that's next, I'm sure. I would do that! Pick me!
For the most part, I'm just not a gamer; preferring to read, research, study, even pretend I'm buying a house in Scotland using the RightMove app on my phone or their website. I've probably purchased 1000 houses by now; terraced, semi-detached, detached, and some bungalows. I stay away from the flats usually as I want a backyard for my pretend dog. My pretend dog will probably be small like Ginger -- and who knows, maybe it will actually be Ginger if I do move since I can take her without quarantining her (a small fact you may or may not have realized). I could get into that game too I guess, and I could win it! I could shop for houses with great speed and efficiency. I'm really good at it now. I have got it down to science really. If the house is not close enough to a bus stop it's out the door. If it's not close enough a good grocery store so I can pedal my bike a half-mile or so, it's out the door. If it has the bathroom (notice I didn't say "a bathroom" because so many of the houses I could afford have only ONE bathroom -- and some of them are showers only.) on the upper level, which they call the first level, we call it the second story; it would be out the door as well. Nope, I'm pretty demanding on my house choices to be sure! I win at that one! Quarter or no quarter, I spend hours shopping for the right house I'll never buy.
To each their own. I raised two girls that could spend hours beating each other up, crashing into each other, destroying one another's kingdoms or just creating things that blow my mind...all the while cussing at each other as if they were mortal enemies; and I guess they are to some degree, they are sisters. My son plays games, but he's more of a football coach type on those sporting games where you create individual team players and play against others who do the same. He's good...during off-season I will literally drive to his house and watch a few games, eat pizza and feel pretty satisfied. I wonder if my kids would go shopping online with me tomorrow and ... well, nevermind.
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