When Samuel Morse transmitted the first message via the telegraph in 1844 it read “What hath God wrought.” On November 29, 1972, “the first commercially successful video game,” Pong, was announced by Atari. Electronic Ping Pong, what more could one want?

Sometime after that, my Aunt Dottie, Uncle Paul, and cousin Brad had one hooked to their basement television set. Two controllers with a wheel to move your primitive paddles on the vertical edges of the television screen. This was the shit! I picked up that you could spin the wheel and put a little ‘English’ on the square. It was not a ball.

After that, there was this little plastic Mattel Electronic Football device. Hours and hours were wasted playing that game alone with, as I recall, reasonable competency. I can still hear the beeps it made if I try. I see they are available on eBay, no way in hell I am getting one. I am too old to regress. That was fun at sixteen, not sixty-two.

A few years later, we got our own Atari- mid late seventies. Pong, then Space Invaders. More hours were spent on the basement TV, moving the joystick along the bottom of the screen to fire upon images of spaceships. Young adolescent men should have been out seeking girls, and often we did after an hour or two starting with that. We learned girls were more fun than Atari.

Pacman on Atari was a huge event in May of 1980. That was like getting Beenie Babies later. Now you can play that addicting game in the comfort of your home without feeding an endless supply of quarters into an arcade machine. That kind of ended it for me, I turned twenty-one and tried to grow up with mixed results.

Sometime in the early nineties, a colleague sold me my first desktop computer. That offered an art program called Paintbrush as I recall. I couldn’t draw or paint on paper and that ancient relic was no help either. The hook here was solitaire. At this moment, I don’t know if there is a paper set of playing cards in our home, but eight or ten times I became mildly addicted to solitaire. Prep period for Mr. Heinz on a Friday, worn out and weekend-ready? Five minutes of solitaire and I’ll do something productive. Click, click, click, the bell rings and there went that time.

My second laptop had a new discovery. Fuji Golf. I am sure I can look around and put it on my laptop and/or handheld computer (you call cell phone). That ain’t going to happen. Was I addicted to that game? Guilty as charged. It was perfect. I would type a test or study guide question, flip over to that screen, electronically hit a ball, and do it over and over and over.

I am glad to say I grew out of those hobbies. I did write a bad novel in the nineties and another not-terrible one in the 2000s (lost on a failed flashed drive). That probably became my distraction, and with the sophistication and addictive powers of some of these things today, I am glad I threw my gaming keys into a flowing river.

Mr. Heinz is aware that schools now offer competitive gaming for students. I get it, and I don’t. In a way, it’s just a technological extension of chess club or quiz bowl (my gift). Any activity giving young people opportunities and HOPEFULLY social contact is never a bad thing, but guys, as stated- girls are more fun… well for some time now, women. Love ya, Kim! 😘

I have had and have many faults. I can say this, playing the game of pong, kept me off a bong. Bad, bad rhyme to end, but I was doing ok until now…