(m)other voices

It occurred to me recently that I should add a few ‘likes’ to my much neglected Facebook page. When I sat down to do it, the format had changed over to timeline and I could no longer see where to list my favorite books or music. A little perturbed, I accepted an invite to the rapidly growing Pinterest.

Seduced by the beautiful images as I attempted to add some pins to my own boards, I found myself weaving through streams of pictures and ideas that often repeated, like some winding hall of mirrors. A few pins inspired me, but then the next click almost immediately gave way to tangential corridors and soon I felt my evening hours being sucked away into hypnotic associative image play.

Remember Dungeons and Dragons? I played that game as a kid, it was great. I loved the storytelling aspects of it, the adventuring with friends. That was before the hormones kicked in. Once that started, my dice bag gathered dust under the bed while I put on my make-up wearing a pair of Madonna style fingerless gloves.

As an adult I carried on a relationship with a physicist who still played from time to time with a gang of interesting revelers. They were kind enough to allow me to join them, and after we moved in together we would host day long sessions of battle and mayhem. Soda pop was no longer the drink of choice, but the pleasure of play remained.

This same guy also played on line video games. There were days when I would leave the house in the morning as he sat in front of a computer wearing a headset and talking to someone he’d never actually met. And that same night, I would fall asleep to the clicks of his fingers still tapping on the keyboard.

I tried playing the game, I even enjoyed it sometimes, but I never really understood the drive to stay in there for so long, amassing fortunes and upgrading equipment only to level up and devote even more time only to be asked to repeat the same tasks. I guess he formed deep attachments to the members of his guild, and I was only attached to him.

I’d chat with people, but without meeting them, without being able to tell what was fabricated in graphic image and what was real, I couldn’t seem to bond.

The relationship ended when I decided that I wanted to have children, like, in real life.

The other day my son told me that he wants to get a DS because “Leapsters are for babies.”

I just nodded.

He tells me that he loves video games, but I notice that if given the choice between playing a game together as a family or of gaming alone, he always chooses real life.