An Englishman in New England

I have played vidogames since I was around 7 years old - I just couldn't get enough of them. It was the escapism, and the ability to do impossible things that held the appeal for me, and to some extent, still does. One minute I could be blasting my way through an armada of enemy spaceships, and the next (with a deft flick of the wrist, and slap on the cartridge), I would be leading the pack in the Monaco Grand Prix with Nigel Mansell and Mario Andretti shaking their fists in anger at this young upstart who came out of nowhere and showed them up as chumps with my superbly tight cornering.

Videogames were a habit that my parents went from encouraging, to occasionally enquiring about, to raising a disapproving eyebrow, before finally resorting to scorn and outright disapproval. "why don't you go outside and play?", my mother used to wheedle and cajole. My father insisted I read books to counteract what surely was the slow degradation of my mind into some kind of grey gruel-like gravy substance - "It's a lot better for your imagination than those damn Sega-mega-Nintendo-drive things", he would say, authoritatively.

This last comment was caught, and preserved carefully, like a dried butterfly husk, in the glass display case of my mind, and it proved its use a few weeks after the fact, when my parents decided to try playing the games with my brother and I, and y'know, bond.

After the initial fumbling with the controllers, instructions were given by my brother and I to the elders, repeated, simplified, repeated again, and dropped in favor of "press this button when I say - NOW!". My mother simply couldn't understand why the evil emperor needed to be vanquished with the righteous sword of whatever, and why our differences couldn't be discussed peacefully over a cup of tea. We ended her quest when she asked which button made her sword-swinging, muscle-bound alter-ego sit down and read a book.

My father only fared worse when, while attempting to navigate treacherous hairpin bends at hazardously high speeds, he apologised to one of the computer-controlled cars for cutting in front, and asked me where the turn signal was.

My brother and I sighed heavily, for we were learning an important truth that all kids of our generation hopefully learned at some point in their lives - Parents suck at videogames.