Gamer Grouch

I will admit to being an almost addicted gamer. Not one of the youthful, quirky attired, bug-eyed machine shooters and race drivers in some dingy purveyor's joint kind of gamer but only someone sitting at a computer idling away time with a stable of game choices waiting on my generous monitor. I brook no shame for enjoying this pastime. Why would I? Seeing those out on the golf course daily hitting the little white thing or the card players shuffling and swatting down bits of cardboard, yes, and even those buzzing away at their sewing machines making quilts or clicking their knitting needles into adorable whatnots, I know that we are altogether, shameless idlers bereft of excuses for the dalliances. We find our "sport" absorbing and often enlightening. Gaming is a solitary event, but it is also peaceful. There are no critiques or snipes or jokes to fend off, no tea pots to attend or sandwiches to serve. You can read on your computer. Reading from a monitor can be habit-forming. After downloading books to stack on your library shelves that take up no virtual space at all,  you can sit at level-gaze with a screen properly positioned, your head and back comfortably erect and the text size and distance tuned to your specific requirements. At the same time as you read, you can also play your favorite music, sip tea, munch lunch or sample wine and doze on demand. It's really quite nice. It should be quite nice, but sometimes it is frustrating. Computer games are relatively cheap and come in almost every form you can think of. There are brain trainers, shoot-em-uppers, bursting  bubbles, solving crosswords, playing mah-jong  until you are blind and racing cars or flying planes like a pro. Sort of. There is a downside and it has nothing to do with "wasting your time" as the accusation is often flung about. Because game designers are at it to make money, they make changes to your favorite games, the ones that you go to when your daily walk or gym visit is over and you just want to veg a bit and straighten out your head. But you sit and tap on your game and oh no! It crashes or disappears and when you go to "help", there is none, even if you fill out every blank perfectly. The next step to reviving your favorite game that is no more, is the hard one. You are given instructions to do things that only computer experts should touch. For some reason, after getting to the right page of instructions, the language of the computer suggested is entirely unlike that in front of you, and you are lost. Step three is my version.  Give up. You need a new computer. Getting a new computer is death to many of the games you have come to regard as family, but just as family, sometimes you have to say good-bye and move on. Good-bye Luxor I, Good-bye Great Gatsby and all the Detectives who came and went, their mysteries now forever encapsulated, unsolved. Ah gaming!