As the first generation to grow up with video games continues to get older, I darkly imagine a drastic trend that might appear, illuminating the answer to this question—an entire segment of the population, conspicuously digitally afflicted, many years after the fact. I wonder if, sitting in the lounge of the assisted-living facility in my old age, I will come to the realization that my generation’s nerds are being done in more quickly than the rest. In the waiting room at the geriatric orthopedist’s office, perhaps there will be a curiously high concentration of patients complaining of certain aches and pains specific to overuse of video game controls. We might find that any dementia our generation suffers includes seeing pixilated worlds or hearing primitive digital audio.
On the other hand, the future may be merciful and allow us to blend into the larger population without experiencing any perplexing problems with our health. For my quarter, I’m hoping that any long-term health effects will be positive.
I have a friend who is a jaywalking pro. He plays it close. I’m sure drivers hate him (when I drive, I am vexed by people who jaywalk as he does). He positions himself off the curb. As the flow of cars begins to dwindle, he looks up the street and begins to move farther from the curb. He advances just enough so that the remaining cars go by without touching him, then continues to advance farther into the street—and quite close to the passing cars. As the last car zips by him, he finishes crossing the street, his clothes lightly fluttering in the rush of air produced by the drag following the car or truck. A lifelong New Yorker, he may be a seasoned jaywalker. On the other hand, he might just be channeling his experiences as “Frogger.”
I’ve never considered myself disciplined—or adequately interested—enough to do well at academics based on rote memorization. My brain enjoys learning things that fit within a larger context. My experience with high school geometry was the epitome of this. The first half of the year, I thought memorization was the only way to learn the material, and did miserably. In the second half, as the context of the whole began to illuminate geometry’s shapes, I started to understand the formulae and how they related to various objects, and did much better. Foreign language was a subject in which I managed to consistently perform poorly, as exemplified by my junior high school experience with French. Wrapping my brain around the various verb conjugations felt futile. My memory felt like a sieve in that class. However, at the same time, down the block from school, I was playing “Pac Man” for an hour on one quarter, having memorized an entire book of patterns for its numerous levels.
