Putting Up With Gaming

As a gamer's wife, I have to put up with a lot. I have to put up with dinner being late because we have to wait for Grim to finish his level/game, or I lose out on the romantic night because he has to game with the guys online. I have to put up with “Just another second, hon. I've almost destroyed this rabbit! Then I will have access to the magical watermelon rind!” Plus, I have to listen to him and all his friends talk about gaming ALL THE TIME. Honestly, that is probably the worst.

Since we work in the gaming industry, we have to discuss gaming quite a bit, which is OK with me – I mean it is work after all. However, one would think that we live, eat, sleep, and breathe nothing but games, given how others react when they learn what we do. Especially for me, since I also teach at a technical school, whose fight song could be entitled “Game on, Game on, for Freeport . . .” This is the type of school where, if MMOG was offered as a major, that would be the only major. No one would attend the school for any other subject. This is a school where, when you walk down the halls, no only do a slew of students duke it out in a game of Magic, but wireless laptops are open and it looks like the owners have a terrible habit of talking loudly to themselves (“To the left! To the left! Behind you! AHHH!!”).

Needless to say, I don't broadcast that I work with or write about games for a living, and I sure as heck have learned not to mention that Grimwell is my husband. I've had students actually recognize the name and then want to do nothing more than talk about him all night long! I have to live and work with the guy, and the last thing I want to do is talk about his gaming habits with a bunch of MY students all night long! If I should let it slip that I edit his website, all I hear for the next hour is, “Does he play this? What does he think of that? What server is he on?” Or, God save me, even worse: “Do your play EQ2?” What server are you on?”

To tell the truth – I have no idea. When anyone starts talking about mmorpgs or PS3, it's like someone flipped a switch and now everyone is speaking in tongues. I, on the other hand, then have the ungrateful task of trying to bring attention back around to whatever it is the students are supposed to learning.

And it's not just students – our personal friends also fall under this banner. Take our friend Jay. When we are together with Jay and his wife, Jay is a normal person. However, get him alone with Grim (or, God help me, Grim and myself) and it is non-stop game talk. My eyes start to glaze over and I begin to mentally rearrange my shoe closet. Even worse, sometimes Grim is not even there, but since I am, I become the gaming conversationalist by default. As an example, last week I was at a girl-gathering with Jay's wife at Jay's house. In the midst of our superficial talk, Jay came home and asked his wife if he had time to play his new game downstairs. Then he proceeded to share all the info of his new game with me – how he got it for free with trade-ins, how he can't wait to play it, how he talked to Grim about it for some reason, yadda yadda yadda . . . and my eyes begin to lose focus.

It's not that I am against gaming or anything; quite the reverse. There are many games, online and PC games, which I play. My kids play a variety of PC, online, and console games as well. We are a gaming family, and I have learned to accept that. It is just so difficult to talk about gaming ALL THE TIME –especially when I am seen as little more than Grim's proxy game conversationalist. I am not a gamer – not in the way Grim and his associates are, so the only thing I ask is that, sometimes, can we talk about something else? How about those Lakers? I hear the weather can be nice to talk about. Do you have any boring tales about your family? Because I would LOVE to talk about all that.