Actel and Video Games

I remember in Actel we had this one assignment where we read a fictional story about raising a genderless child. And the kid wore overalls and had a gender neutral name and a private place and basically the last time any one knew that persons gender was when they were born. And it was an experiment, so that person’s gender became a state secret. I thought it was such a fascinating concept, because this child baffled everyone and was able to just be who they really were. I always remembered that story, that was far better than the one about the girl locked in a closet on Venus. I don’t even remember who wrote it, or what it was called, but it always blew my mind.

I always wore overalls and boy clothes as a kid, I looked silly in girl clothes. Even my mom had to buy new baby clothes because the hand me downs from my sister made me look so ridiculous. One night I drew 33 super man cartoons. And my cousins made me watch Temple of Doom over and over and over. Well, it was exciting. I had an Indiana Jones computer game but I kept falling in the crocodile pit over and over. And that stupid ET game from Atari, crap! He just falls in a hole and you can’t ever get him out! That was such a depressing video game. I remember one game I liked was called Caveman Olympics but it had these weird neanderthals with heavily secure gender archetypes in place. And I didn’t like that much, so that was frustrating. But the concept was funny, I just didn’t like the sexism. And Duck Hunt got boring, too easy. Super Mario Brothers was fun though, I played all four of those. I wanted to be a baseball player, but I didn’t trust anyone so I decided not to. Getting hit in the face with a baseball, no way. I hated baseball practice. Kickball was fun though.

And then I switched to Katamari because no one dies, you just roll people up and make the universe. That’s fun. I’m going to go back to playing that for a while, because it makes me laugh. It’s even funnier than Ms Pac Man!