Soul Thumping

Musical chairs - A Childhood Game Responsible for My Nightmares

Last Friday Poseidon and I were hosting one of our legendary fire pit parties and as I carried chairs from the patio to the yard, I had a kindergarten flashback that stopped me cold in my tracks (literal tracks...I was trying to step in my existing foot steps each time I carried a chair):  Musical chairs.  I hated this game with every fiber of my being.  Pressure.  Pressure to win, to be the victor.  Pressure to get through this rot of a game without embarrassing myself.  The word "game" implies fun.  Evil trickery!

If you've read any of my previous posts, my aversion to most childhood games, not just musical chairs (the Chutes and Ladders post is eerily similar), is well documented.  Stress and anxietal depression are my long-time pals (the kind of friends you really don't want to play with but are too shy to say no to them), and competitive games were enough to make me sweat and tremble in sheer terror (fortunately, I was usually able to stop short of vomiting), and musical chairs was among the worst, in my opinion.

On one particular occasion when playing this game, I remember wearing a red dress with red socks and black shoes.  I was so nervous and hoping to heck I would be near a chair when the music stopped.  The anxiousness of it all turned me a nice shade of white (which I'm sure looked lovely against my red dress, red socks and black shoes).  There were three of us left, and two chairs.  The music played and played and played.  I was ready.  As soon as the music finally stopped, I turned to plant me behind in one of the remaining seats, but one of my little black patent leather shoes had other plans for me, and headed in the opposite direction.  I ended that round of musical chairs with my behind on the floor, not in one of those two seats.

Luckily, I kept my dignity in tact by not exposing my ruffled panties or this ending would have been much worse...written from behind the walls of a padded room, wrapped in a nice warm straight jacket, typing with my nose.

 

--Fortuitous Observer

A Gen-Xer's Delima: Atari or Wait for a Nuclear Bomb?

A few weeks ago I posted some inaniloquent musings about things I miss (mostly from my childhood in the 80s), and my Generation X nostalgia crept in again this morning with flashbacks of everything "80s" like television shows, games, friends, playing outside, nukes, and of course our Atari system.

Growing up as an Xer during the Cold War was such an anxious time (at least for me) because the threat of nuclear annihilation lingered constantly in the back of the mind, like that musty smell in an attic that no amount of mothballs can shake (I honestly prefer the musty smell to the mothball smell).  I remember riding my bike one evening and the sky looked strange, purple and dark grey, and I thought, "Oh, know, the bomb has been released and I'm going to die."

Doom and gloom were always present in me, so when Atari came along, and my parents decided to buy the system for us, it was something new and wildly exciting that took my mind off exploding into a million radiated bits.

My parents (like many parents at that time) were worried that we would no longer want to play outside and that we would become zombies, addicted to this new fangled machine with it's hideous graphics (I'll be honest, we didn't find those graphics hideous at the time because we had nothing to compare them to, except Pong, and hands down, Atari graphics were much better), replete with sound effects.

It turns out, our parents didn't need to worry about coercing us into video gaming rehab or force us to go outside and get some fresh air.  We wanted to be outdoors.  Sure, trying to figure out the new Raiders of the Lost Ark game or improve our Missile Command skills was fun stuff, but after a while, the outside world called our names, boredom with the Atari system would set in and we would be jonesing (now there is a lost but not forgotten 80s term for you) to get outside and pass the football around, or build a tree house, or dig in the dirt.

Being in the outdoors seemed less scary after playing indoors with the Atari, though I'm not sure why.  The foreboding war still loomed in the background as before, but perhaps my desire to "live" or my bravery intensified after experiencing being shot at by space creatures, dodging barrels hurled at me by King Kong, or swinging over a pit in the jungle to escape deadly scorpions?  Game Over.

 

--Fortuitous Observer

Chutes and Ladders - How a Board Game Led to Insanity

Can a board game cause neurotic behavior, or is going full-on schizoid over a board game a sign of neurosis?  Chicken...egg..?  As a kid, we had a few board games at home and I can honestly say, I hated board games.  No, wait, hate isn't a strong enough word:  I loathed those board games.  The mere mention of playing Sorry, or Trouble could easily spark in me a twitching fit with an onset of red itchy hives, but bringing out Chutes and Ladders from the closet was enough to send me into an anxiety-induced coma.

I don't recall being competitive exactly, so it wasn't the idea of losing games that convinced my brain to propose a near nervous breakdown, it was the idea of getting to the top of that game board, then landing on the loooonnnnngggg chute that carried me all the way back to the bottom.  That would be catastrophe in its most pristine form.  To have gone so far, only to be swiftly carried back to the bottom of the board to start from scratch was not something my 8 year old mind wanted to process.  Now, can anyone blame me for avoiding board games, especially the most diabolical of those games, Chutes and Ladders?

Insanity isn't really involved here, I promise.  I was a very anxious kid, easily stressed over the most mundane of things, even silly little board games like Chutes and Ladders (I just had an involuntary twitch as I typed those words).  I bring this up now because this childhood memory was triggered while sitting in the waiting room of my doctor's office today.  I saw the game on a shelf and promptly broke into a cold sweat.  A kid went to reach for it and I wanted to tackle him while screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" (in slow motion, movie style), as if I were about to save him from being hit by a bus (fitting analogy).

I kept my composure and remained seated until my doctor called me into her office.  When I went back out into the waiting room, the kid was gone, and the game was safely in its place on the shelf.  Next week I plan to sneak that game out in my coat and burn it in the parking lot while performing a ceremonial "closure" dance.

 

--Fortuitous Observer

Super Bowl XLIV Chick-style

I am a chick who enjoys football.  I like watching the games; I cringe when players take a hard hit to the head; I comment on who has the best looking butt and who has the dumbest looking mouth guard, and yes, being a woman, I also judge a team on the color of their uniforms (except Detroit, it doesn't matter what color they wear, they suck, and Cleveland does take the trophy for having the ugliest uniform colors, and they suck also).

I'm not an expert on all of the statistics of teams and players and l don't want to be because, well, I have a life and other interests and I'll leave that to every man in the country who has a football blog.  Having gotten that statement out of the way, here are my thoughts about game day this year (by the way, I'm running a 5K race Sunday afternoon, before the Super Bowl, in temperatures that are going to be less than 40 degrees, so depending on if I trip and scrape most of my face off on cold pavement or a toe freezes and falls off, I may not give a shit about Super Bowl XLIV):

1.  I'm not hiding the fact that I'm pulling for Indianapolis.  Why?  No special reason.  I don't dislike the Saints.  I love the city of New Orleans and no one on the team irritates me much.  Their uniform colors are ok, but I would like to see un update to the fleur di lis.  Maybe some funky shadowing or some ivy growing around it, I don't know, something to give it some pizazz.

2.  Drew Brees needs a hairstyle.  I think he has good hair, it just doesn't do anything to flatter him so he might want to visit a new hair salon.  Just my opinion.

3.  Petyon Manning needs a hairstyle.

4.  Peyton Manning has a great butt.  He is so boy-next-door cute that I just want to pinch his cheeks (face cheeks, let's keep it clean) or give him a noogie or something.  I can't help it.  Oh, and I think he is a great player, even though there was so much chatter on the internet about him choking and failing under pressure.  Whatever.

Now, there are rumors going around about he and his wife are divorcing, and I don't know if it's true or isn't true, but if he loses on Sunday, it could be due to those personal pressures he is under, so I hope all those Monday morning quarterbacks will keep that in mind.

5.  I'm interested in seeing the commercials because they haven't been funny in at least 3 years.  Oh, oh, wait, except for the one a couple of years ago where the guy used his girlfriend's white cat to clean up pasta sauce and she walked in and thought he was stabbing her cat because he had the cat dripping with sauce in one had and big butcher knife in the other hand?  That was hilarious.  Actually, I'm curious to see if CBS runs the so-called "pro-life" ad.  All I'm going to say about that one folks is this:  let's keep politics out of football.  It's bad enough we have politics in politics.

Life will go on after Super Bowl XLIV.  I barely remember who won last year (I know, I know it was Pittsburgh), and I'll forget by next year who even played this year, that is how important the whole thing is to me in the grand scheme of things, but everyone else is making their predictions, so I'm compelled to jump on the bandwagon:

Colts - 17; Saints - 13

--Fortuitous Observer 

Empathy for Video Game Heroines

I and entirely too cynical for my own good and that is something I'm working on.  I think nearly everyone on the planet is out to stick it to the next person, and maybe they are, but I don't have to fall victim to the trap of believing it in my soul anymore.  So, while I've been reevaluating my cynicism level, I took a look at my empathy level, and I have to tell you, it is low, and that keeps me up at night.

I can, however, claim with certainty that I have great empathy for video game heroines.  I'm not even a video game player.  To be quite honest, video games scare the hell out of me.  Most video games I've seen are entirely too complicated for my Gen X brain to wrap around.  A few years ago (I'm guessing almost 10 now), I saw a video game at Best Buy while I was shopping for other things, and I found the picture on the box so intriguing that I was compelled to by the game (even though I did not play video games).  The name of this game:  "American McGee's Alice."  This is not Lewis Carroll's little Alice, I assure you.  The box art featured a knife-wielding, blood-soaked Alice in Wonderland with dirty tangled hair standing next to a skeletal version of the Cheshire Cat.  Set years after her travels through Wonderland, Alice is now older, creepy and quite possibly demented.  You just have to read the description on Wikipedia (I included the link above) of this game or you won't believe me.

Buying the game was my first mistake (it wasn't cheap).  Playing the game was my second mistake.  Keep in mind, I hadn't played video games in years, not since my Atari at home, really.  The graphics were complex (probably not by today's standards), and the game was difficult.  I couldn't get past the first "task."  I was constantly propelling Alice over a cliff (or the side of a castle or something), accidentally (due to lack of skill) causing her to land in a boiling lake of acid.  The worst part of that would be her screams.  When she fell into the lake, she would scream "Help me, help me" as she tried to claw her way up the side of the mountain.  I'm not kidding!  I got so upset being responsible for her falling into the lake that I felt sick to my stomach listening to her pitiful cries for help.  I could never get her out of the boiling lake, she always died, and my game was over in less than a minute and I was an emotional wreck.

I was so distraught with killing Alice that after a few days, I couldn't do it anymore.  My skin broke out in red itchy hives when I played the game.  I was fully aware at the time that it was only a video game, and I wasn't really killing her, and I was a rational person being irrational, but her screams sounded real and I felt terribly responsible for keeping her safe.  I had nightmares about this damn video game.

At the end of the week, I took the game CD out of the computer, put it back into its box, taped it up, and took it to work with me, giving it to a co-worker who was a gamer.  He was thrilled with the game as he heard so much about it, and wanted to know why I was giving it away.  I told him I was tired of curling up in the fetal position on the floor every night chewing the edge of my pajama sleeve for comfort until I cried myself to sleep.  He thought I was kidding, of course.  I wasn't.

So you see, I take comfort in my realization that I am not completely without empathy as I thought earlier this week.  While reaching far back into the recesses of my brain for a sliver of evidence that I am capable of feeling something other than annoyance for others, I pulled this memory of the video game back out into the open and realized that I am capable of empathy; overwhelming empathy.  Maybe the general people population will soon get on my empathy radar, but for now, I'll continue to feel the love for deranged, suicidal, pathetic animated characters.  It's a start.  A slow one, but it's a start.

--Fortuitous Observer

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned on the 3rd Grade Playground

Another gorgeous autumn Friday, and all I can think to say is, "Where has Friday been?"  This week just would not end for me.  One would think, at the glorious age of 40, I would have learned by now that work weeks grow longer by the minute the more you look forward to the weekend.  Of course, one would think I would have learned a great deal about everything by now, but I haven't.  Not really.  I think my absorbtion of the way things work stopped on the 3rd grade playground.  All I need to know to get me through life I learned then.  Anything after that, just fodder for my blog.

For instance, I learned on the playground when playing Red Rover (you remember that horrid little game don't you?) that the scrawny small kids are the target for busting through the human chain, and at that time, I was the scrawny small kid.  Much to the chagrin of my playmates however, I also decided it was rather moronic to let a colossal kid try to bust through my hands, knocking them completely out of my little gloves, so I let go!  Hell yes, I let go.  Let the humongous kids bust through, I don't care.  Was I going to get a trophy or anything for holding off the big kids, allowing my tiny hand to be smashed and bruised?  No.  Not even a, "Thanks girl, way to play!"  Really?  Nothing?  My poor cold, skinny little hand could have been shattered into a thousand pieces and you yell at me because I broke the chain?

I know, I was a bad teammate when it came to Red Rover.  I don't want emails pouring in screaming that I didn't (or still don't, which is entirely possible) understand the concept of being a team player and all that jazz.  I think I did.  I also understood physical pain and the importance of avoiding it whenever possible.  To my former 3rd-grade playmates who lived for winning Red Rover every day on the playground, I do offer you my sincerest apology.  Hopefully you all have internet access during recreation hours in the prison system so you can read my apology on-line.  I was a bad team player, only thinking of myself and my future as a writer with mangled hands.

The same is still true in adulthood, only it isn't necessarily the size of the kids who break through the chain, or the size of those that keep the chain intact:  it's their determination.  My determination to win at Red Rover wasn't as fierce as others' determination.  I was more determined to succeed in other ways, determined to get what I wanted from life using brains, not brawn.  The trouble is (yes, still), I'm not always sure of what I want...but, as it is Friday, I'm going to make peace with that for approximately 48 hours and not care.

--Fortuitous Observer