growing up i never had a console, but loved to play in the arcade or laundromat etc. when i was in highschool, the NES had it’s boom and the people my mom worked for didn’t want me to be excluded so they gifted me one. it was instant crack. i wasn’t allowed tv or games before homework but since I got home hours before my mom, I would play secretly, listen for my mom’s car, and scramble to shut everything down when she got home. this is Super Mario Brothers I’m talking about. after some months, i finally got to the castle and defeated Koopa only to be told the princess was in another castle. set to work on the second world (night time, no turtles just beetles.) some days or weeks later, i eventually beat the second Koopa. “the princess is in another castle.” dog, are you fucking kidding me?
I had what addicts call a moment of clarity. I was getting a video fix, and i had to go behind my mom’s back to do it. I never played that NES again and eventually gave it to my friend. I never dreamed that we as a generation would all still be playing video games as adults. I thought my generation would be the one to not smoke, either, since we had access to facts about tobacco addiction from a young age ¯\(ツ)/¯
