My father introduced my brother and me to the wonders of the computer when I was four or five years old. Back then there was no mouse, no fancy background to the main screen, just a list of words on a menu that led to various games. Of course they probably led to other things as well, but I wasn’t to know that just yet. When I went to kindergarten a green-screened Apple computer sat in the corner of the room to be used as a learning tool and I enjoyed playing games on the computer just as much as doing a messy project with an easel and paint. To me, the computer was a source of entertainment; I didn’t realize I was learning anything.
The first PC game I can ever remember playing was Goofy’s Railway Express, created in 1991. It taught me how to count, recognize shapes, and follow instructions. At age nine I encountered games with better graphics and bigger ideas such as shown in the various educational games such as seen in the JumpStart and Dr. Brain series. Both are puzzle and problem-solving oriented and made me think through puzzles with logic. My favorite out of all of them was The Time Warp of Dr. Brain. In this game I got to solve increasingly challenging logic puzzles which would pose a challenge to me, even now. Just thinking about it makes me want to look through the old MS DOS games and play them all over again.
This leads me to a negative side-effect of computer gaming: obsession. Most games are very addicting once you become attached to the idea they present. When my parents finally gave me my own computer I barely left my room and I would have forgotten to eat if they hadn’t come in and told me to. In fact, there have been days quite recently where I’ve skipped lunch altogether and played the day away. Fortunately for me, I also had an appetite for watching cartoons so I eventually came downstairs to eat and watch a show.
When I entered middle and high school the games became an hindrance to my work, drawing me away when I should be doing some assignment and leaving me with a distaste for it overall. My grades took a major dive in High School, helped not only by my gaming, but also my reading habits. I’d go to the library and borrow five books each from a different series and then sit down and read them all, one after the other. It soon got to be that I couldn’t concentrate at home, leaving me with rushing to do work while I was still in the classroom.
Now the computer takes up most of my free time, but I have many non-electronic things in my room to pull me out of my gaming addiction. The most productive of these crafty distractions is my fascination with writing and in particular calligraphy. I’ll go downstairs and lay out some paper, ink, paint, brushes, and pens and make something that I later get praise for from my parents. I plan on doing more of these crafty sorts of things during summer, but the pull of gaming is quite strong in my now and will eventually pull me back in to a new game with a new idea.
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