LogFAQs > #974394917

My stepfather was a junkie. He would spend weeks on the road driving truck high on coke and uppers, then come home and drink and do heroin to come down. It was a roller-coaster of narcotic mayhem.

He was always trying to sleep off the coke binge when he was home, and if we made the slightest noise he'd become enraged and beat us severely using whatever tools were within arms reach: belts, books, a hairbrush, clothes hangers, rolling pins... or just his good ol'-fashioned fists when he was feeling sentimental.

We learned quickly to play quietly, which was a difficult task in our small and squallid one bedroom apartment. We lived in a poor part of town, and many of our neighbors were violent druggies just like our stepfather. Playing outside wasn't always an option for us. My two brothers and I did not have a proper bedroom of our own. We lived and played in the parlor, except on those rare days when we had company and our parents would tidy up our cozy little shithole in an effort to give our sad family some sort of facade of normalcy... Like spit shine on a three-day old turd. The three of us slept crowded together on a sagging, well-worn fold out couch, lulled to sleep by late night talk shows and early AM infomercials.

That TV nanny would prove to be our saving grace. For Christmas one year our mother bought us a second-hand NES at a yard sale over in one of the more affluent neighborhoods.

Many an afternoon we spent in the glow of that old CRT, dust dancing in the dusky haze. We would have to play with the volume turned all the way down, suppressing our squeals of joy when we finally felled Bowser and rescued the princess (for real this time!), or gulp down our awestruck gasps when we discovered there was a whole second quest in The Legend of Zelda.

Even with that menacing junkie threat slumbering in the next room over, there was no denying the joyful escape afforded us by that electronic angel. Which is in large part why all three of us PROUDLY call ourselves gamerboyz to this very day :)

#gamer4lyfe #gamersriseup