I'm a gamer and I am not ashamed!

   We're gamers in this house. 

   Being a 'gamer' has a lot of different meanings these days, but most of them apply! I grew up as my brother's competition on a lowly Nintendo (original, and we had 2 games). He brought the first game console into our house, moving through Xboxes and PlayStations. Learned shooters and farming games. I ran with Mario. I flew with Spiro. On the computer, I was the master of Fury (a jet-fighter game) and I played through Diablo more times than I could count.

   But more than any of these, we play games together on the dining room table . 

  Our family knew many card games, and we all played ramole on camping trips, betting with chips or piles of pennies. We have a cupboard of board games now. The picture above is the kid's smaller version. 

   Why games? It was where I learned about taking turns. I learned math playing cribbage with my parents. I learned strategy with my sister's chess board. And I learned about losing while playing games. My parents were not the kind who would let the child win. We lost a lot at first. I should have known my younger brother would be my better when, at the age of six, he beat me at chess.

 But we learned by mimicking our opponent's strategies. We improved. We learned to be gracious victors. 

  And we came to see how all the skill in the world could be outdone by luck, yet skill paid off in the long run.

   I had the chance to join a Dungeon & Dragons group in high school, and that taught me a lot. I became a Game master after that, where I organized the adventures and guided characters through. Those familiar with the game will know that 'guided' is used loosely; players have a tendency to run off in any and every direction EXCEPT the one a GM is trying to point them to. I learned improvisation. I figured out what people enjoyed in their stories, and when they got bored. I became a story teller. 

   Has it been a while? Is it time to pull out that deck of cards and find a friend to play?

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