child’s play
12.19.06 • comment (3) • trackback
I work as a researcher at a hospital. Prior to starting work there I assumed, as I think many do, that doctors simply materialize in these places to diagnose and treat the patients. Either that or they live there. As a former patient, I’d never quite realized that doctors commute and hospitals have human resources departments (trust me, they’re just as misguided as anywhere else). These mundane, workaday facts are very far from the minds of the patient and family. For them, the hospital is not part of the daily routine, but instead an unwelcome disruption of “real life”. Patients understandably want to be done with the hospital, and its bland food, and its medications, and its small beds, and its beeps and bells, and its lonely nights, as quickly as possible. In the best case the patients are able to tolerate the disruption with good humor and frequent visits from family members. In the worst case, the patients feel trapped by the hospital, resent the healthy staff, and refuse to participate in the healing process.
This is, by the way, in a rehabilitation hospital, where the focus is on long term recovery, the initial health crisis having passed. Imagine how much worse all of this is in the acute facilities, where the chemotherapy has just begun, the blood clot is still a time bomb, the wounds from the accident are still bleeding, and the surgery is tomorrow. Now imagine that you are a child in this place, surrounded by monitors and needles, forced to undergo all kinds of unpleasant daily routines, forced to spend nights without mom and dad. Everything is uncertain, and as a child you may not really understand the reason for any of it. Though the fear is terrible, the boredom can often be just as bad. Hospitals, despite the greatest efforts, just aren’t kid friendly places.
When I had my surgeries at the age of six I experienced all these things. It was 1988. Winter, I think, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to remember anything detailed from my multiple operations and long hospital stays. Most of the memories I’ve retained have to do with the rare fun moments. The ceramic bunny I painted alongside the kid with spina bifida. A brief flash of riding a tricycle down a corridor in rehab. The heated therapy pool that was run by a physical therapist who, I learned later, was blind. The weird little doll I made out of the same material they use for casts. The thing I remember most clearly? That would be the day someone on staff wheeled in a little TV, connected to a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was my first experience with Super Mario Brothers, but not the last. We got a Nintendo for my recovery at home. The music drove my mother insane but she put up with it. Family friends all bought me games for my birthday, despite the protests of my parents over what was then perceived to be the outrageous cost of cartridges. Mario made the hospital bearable for a few brief nights, and made my long-term recovery–trapped in full leg casts that were molded like a pair of inflexible pants–much, much easier.
Where did videogames begin for you? After all this time, after a literal lifetime of Final Fantasy, Mario, and Doom, I’d nearly forgotten that for me, videogames began in a hospital. My life is so much better for it.
All of this is a long-winded way of telling you that you should donate a little money or Amazon toys to Child’s Play, the annual charity drive started by the heroes at Penny Arcade. It can be as simple as Play-Do, which usually has to thrown out after each individual use in the hospital. So donate. Even something small will make a huge difference to the kids. Trust me.
12.19.06 #
I have vague memories of a Commodore 64 in my family’s possession between 1984 and 1986. Given the packrat nature of my parents, it’s possible the console still exists, locked away in a storage unit somewhere in the deserts of southern California. I doubt it works. I either spilled soda on it or a cat peed on it or something. Probably both. Hopefully in that order. Anyway, the only game I recall was some kind of educational multiplication thing that really did a lousy job of teaching me how to multiply.
You might appreciate knowing this–the Super Mario Bros. music is your ringtone on my phone.
12.21.06 #
It all started with Kaliko Vision at the age of three. My Godmother was kind of enough to let me jam all over her controller….which was a hybrid of a joystick and telephone numeric keypad — I’m not sure why. My favourite game was “Popeye,” although I remember having fun with a very difficult hot air balloon game that required the player to maneuver and avoid airplane attacks and other miscellaneous aerial debris.
My first personal gaming system was the original Nintendo. I was lucky enough to get that gem at the age of four (God knows how my parents afforded it — pretty sure they each sold a kidney), accompanied by Super Marios 1 and 2. I beat the second Mario Bros. before I even got to level 4 in the first of the series. Many weird twists in that second Mario Bros. You could select among the four main characters of the series: Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess, each having a unique talent to help you progress through the game. Mario was all-around average, Luigi could jump high, Toad was fast at picking up turnips and radishes (Why turnips and radishes? Who Knows? But they gave you coins if you tossed a potion near them and went through the door to the alternate shadow dimension.), and Princess could fly short distances. A Mario game with Shy Guys, rockets, way too many vines, and an end-guy named Wart (cousin to Bowser, King Koopa, or whatever you like), was great fun in my eyes at that age.
Other video game favourites from the classic era:
Nintendo:
Bubble Bobble
Contra
Double Dragon
Dragon Warrior
Karate
Mario Bros. 3
Ninja Turtles 2
Final Fantasy
Beach Volleyball
Zelda
Mega Man
SNES:
Star Fox
Super Mario World
Mario Kart
NBA Live 95
Top Speed
Street Fighter 2
Killer Instinct
Mega Man VII (or something)
Sega:
Altered Beast
Golden Axe
Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun
Mortal Kombat 1 and 2
Toe Jam & Earl 1 & 2
Shining Force 2
Eternal Champions
Sega CD (yes, I was one of the 9 people who owned one):
Night Trap
Groud Zero Texas
–if you research these two games, you will find that they are actually pretty bad ass.
Now to the important issue: I agree with Jon, donate something if you can this holiday. During my youth, my very poor family received many a donation from local church and gift organizations…made all the difference in the world to me. Spent a good deal of time in adolescence and college working for holiday gift giving programmes in the Worcester area…it’s nice to give back when you can.
12.21.06 #
Man does this entry take me back. In regards to the hospitals, I know exactly what you mean. I only had the casts on one leg (we had the same crazy, fantastic, wonderful doctor, remember?) But the boredom was agonizing and I too had an NES wheeled into my room. The only game they had at the time was a terrible surfing one, Wipeout I believe? It truly did make the days go by a little easier and made you not notice things the horrid food and the skin on your upper thighs chafing from the fiberglass as the cotton placed there inevitably began to fall off.
My brother had actually gotten the system for Christmas prior to the hospital stays but I didn’t play much as he was large and would throw me to the side if I tried to play lol.
Favorite good hospital memory: I had this raggedy little Mickey Mouse doll that went with me everywhere and they let me take it into the O.R. so I wouldn’t be so frightened (I used to have a horrible fear of the ether and gas mask they used). When I woke up and reached for Mickey I found that Dr. Nuzzo had put a little cast, just like mine in miniature, on his left leg. I took that doll with me when I got the cast off and Mickey was liberated as well. It was a good day for us both.
A donation to Child’s Play sounds like a fabulous idea.