The Duck Hunt Incident

Approximately fifteen years ago I was sitting in my house playing the game "Duck Hunt" on my Nintendo Entertainment System. For those who don't remember, instead of the traditional rectangular controller, Duck Hunt had a special controller that was actually a gun, or the "NES Zapper."
In order to make the experience of firing a gun, even if it was only an electronic light gun, more bad-ass, I wrapped the cord around my waste in order to simulate a holster for my gun.

NES, Duck Hunt, controllers, and the Zapper (with an extremely long cable).

On this particular fateful day, I was deeply engaged in shooting down those ducks. If I remember correctly, which I rarely do, I was on a hot streak without wasting a single electronic ray/bullet. My hands were as still as rocks as I completed each level with precision, when suddenly, whether it was from drinking too much soda or just from the sheer anxiety I was experiencing, my bladder sent an urgent signal to my brain making it very clear that I had to use the bathroom. 

Not wanting to pause my game, I tried to continue on. I started to notice a tremble in my hands. Beads of sweat were collecting on my brow and then the feeling was spreading throughout my body. First in the feet, and then the legs, and then I started to lose my ability to aim my Zapper. I was seconds away from a full-fledged pee-pee dance:

Luckily, I had just finished a level of Duck Hunt and decided to take that glorious opportunity to go relieve myself. Like the cowboy I was pretending to be, I holstered my Zapper in the cable I had wrapped around my waist and made a beeline for the bathroom.

What happened next will never be erased from the memories of me or my three siblings. Between my sniper-like focus and the volcanic pressure building up in my bladder, I forgot the fact that the Zapper controller was connected to the NES by the very same cable that was wrapped around my waist. In my desperation to avoid flooding my underwear, I ended up yanking the entire NES off the shelf and sending it to a violent death as it fell to the floor with a loud crash. 

Despite the number of times we hit the "reset," and blowing our lungs out into the bottom of the video game cartridges, our family video game system was never able to be played again. 

How many light-ray bullets did you fire at this dog? 

As traumatic as it seemed at the time of the incident, it had an even longer and deeper impact on the lives of four American kids: Our parents never bought us another video game system.* This was in the early 90's, so that meant no Sega, no PlayStation, no XBox, Game Cube, or any of the other newer Nintendo models. At a time in history where video games were rooting themselves deeply into the culture of American youth, we had none. 

While the outcome of my destruction of the original NES appears negative (at the time, especially for my siblings), I tend to look on the bright side of things. I see tons and tons of people that, in my opinion, waste uncountable hours and enormous amounts of money on video game systems and video games. As for me, I can't understand video games*, let alone operate the controllers that now have about 25 different buttons. To be honest, I feel like I am a better person whenever I do anything other than playing video games.

But who knows, if it wasn't for that day where I tried to take the entire NES to the bathroom with me, perhaps I would have turned into one of those people who spend the majority of their waking hours gaming. 

[Stay tuned for my next post which explains how this incident relates to my life in Taiwan and my methods for classroom management.]


----UPDATE----

I've gotten some feedback that calls for some further explanation:

Liar. You had a playstation.
I call bs on you not understanding video games.
You spent actual days playing that 1st person shooter game.


True. We got the original PlayStation long after PlayStation 2 had already been on the market, making it too late in my life and too outdated to have an impact. And yes, I did love that hockey game, and that 1st person shooter game (though I remember hating NHL '09 because I never figured out how to play it to the point where it was fun to play). The overlying point is that while in my life there were a handful of games that I played, it was never a lifestyle.

I apologize for making it sound like I am to video games as a vegetarian is to meat.