It has happened! Computer games have started to control my life on and off
screen. No complicated games like Age of Empires, just simple one of Tetris. You know one, where different shaped and colored bricks fall out of sky and you have to arrange them in nice lines at bottom? Hopefully with end result of all colors matching in straight lines so that they can be removed and point gained.Crazy really, it first happened many years ago when I had this stupid bet that I could get more points than next guy. What that really means is that, "I am going to be up all night playing this game and will be totally incapable of staying awake in office tomorrow, unless of course I play game in office as well". That’s what computer games do to us. We become machines where food and sleep are secondary items to all else. Just keep on playing.............till you drop.
I managed to get through that episode with only a slight increase in my weight and a damaged back from not having moved anything else except my two fingers for a sustained period of time. The latest episode though has created havoc with my life in more ways than one and I am getting seriously worried about it.
I had been playing that game in evening for around three hours and had then gone to bed early for a dreamless and normal sleep. All okay and expected you say? Well, sleep was but when I drove to office next day things started to happen that rapidly woke me up to danger that I was in. There I was in my blue car approaching traffic lights when all of a sudden I swerved into other lane thus ending up stopped neatly behind this other blue car. Behind me, confused and irritated drivers with green and red cars tooted their horns angrily wandering what this maniac was doing. But I? I was happy in that I had managed to get colors arranged and all I needed was another blue car and then we could have a full line................oh, no, what is happening to me? I sat there for a while shivering as it dawned on me that I had entered game itself, it had taken me over.........I was a brick!
Yeah, and that was not all. I found myself one afternoon staring inanely at a house wall and following line of bricks along trying to sort out in my mind which pattern was best and which was not. And at my desk I found that I had arranged all files and papers in a neat pattern according to color and size having totally disregarded any format associated with importance of in-going, outgoing, urgency, etc. Extremely worrying to say least!
I have withdrawn from playing Tetris and other games of that sort hoping that I will stop having these off screen episodes in real life. In hope that I can return to a normal existence without having off-the-screen battles. Do other people suffer from this or is it just me? The other game that I played to have a break from Tetris was "Prairie Dog". One of those annoying games where you have a choice of guns and dogs keep on appearing on screen. Aim and fire being next step. Bang, Bang, Bang, another dog bites dust. Yes, I know, pathetic really, but great fun. Volume up full, there I would be furiously firing at any movement, reloading and starting again and dogs would make a strangled sound as I hit them. But once again I one day realized that all was not well with me, as I used to sit on my balcony and take imaginary potshots at cars as they appeared on road. Or in a busy street I would say "bang, bang" and pretend that I had cleared a path for myself through crowds.
