Gaming in the Malcolm home is a precarious business. To me, gaming brings people together for a laugh, except when I play Scrabble with a formidable opponent—of which I haven’t sat across the table with that level of intensity since my last game with Scrabble Grandma.  Now, when I sit down for a game of Scrabble, I set my intention—a very vogue action: The purpose is to enjoy being around the table with those willing to take a board.  This summer in Iowa, that included my younger son, my niece, and my mom—so much fun!  All were at different playing levels, and for all of us to stay in the game, the turns needed to proceed at a good clip. 

That was not the case with Scrabble Grandma.  With a Scrabble dictionary on the table, a turn could last several minutes until the very best word garnering the most points was discovered from the seven letters on the board.  When it wasn’t my turn, I would be researching words in the dictionary, until Grandma requested the book.  The intense intricacy of this play would push both of us upwards of a 200 point score and place new words in our back pockets for future games.  I scrabblicously adore “qat”; it’s an Arabian shrub, and a powerful Scrabble word when a “u” is non-existent.

My husband Bill, a golfer and engineer, and my older son Will, a gymnast and college student, are competitive.  When our family of four goes to the basement for a game of pool, I push a game of ping pong on them before we take that two-piece ping pong tabletop off of the pool table.  Through many winter months, my younger son Liam and I would go down and hypnotically volley that little plastic ping pong ball back and forth, with the sole purpose of keeping it alive.  It didn’t matter how many times it bounced on a given side or if we played it off of the ceiling or wall, the return was the important part. 

That all changed when the other two joined the game as slam champions.  Still with many hours of hand-eye coordination practice, I could occasionally get in a well-placed, unreturnable volley.  Their personal intentions were to get the game to 21 so that the ping pong tabletop pieces could be removed and their favorite basement sport of pool could commence.  Liam and I prefer the fast action of ping pong.  The analytical geometry of Bill and Will’s planning shots on the pool table slows the game to that of a very deliberate Scrabble game, except there is nothing for the three players to contemplate while waiting for the one player to take his or her shot.  I have a reputation for hitting the cue ball one way: hard and fast.  I detect a slight grimace from my pool partners as we are paired up, but—for good or bad—my actions accelerate the pace of the game.

Around 2010, the Wii video gaming platform entered our home, and the four of us started to play My Sims Racing.  I can’t recall how this came about, but I have a feeling that I may have seen the boys racing on a snow-covered course and that scene reeled me in.  Despite my inability to keep my car on course, avoid smashing into walls, or ever placing in the top three, the graphics of wintry snow make me feel all cozy inside.  If ever I want to draw the four of us from our independent corners of the house, I have a good chance of doing so at the mention of My Sims Racing.  The boys and I jump at the possibility while my husband Bill, who is in the same talent group as me, joins knowing full well his limitations: there will be no slam champion in this game between him nor me.  Yet he’s a good sport and joins in to round out the family of four in the living room.

The summer’s drought has kept us inside the last few days, much as a seven day long blizzard might.  Well, all but Bill; he has managed to golf in a two-day tournament, 18 holes per day, in heat that felt like 100+ degrees.  And on one of those days, he threw in an extra nine holes in the late afternoon.  That evening, I was feeling a bit lonely in the house, despite the fact that the boys had been inside “with me” all weekend.  I crossed my fingers and called up the stairs, “Shall we play My Sims Racing?”  Double yeses rained down from above, and the three of us prepped to play. 

Each time before we play video games on the Wii, we first have to build out our controllers. It doesn’t seem logical, but when we leave batteries in the controllers, the power is sucked dry as the controllers sit unused in the drawer.  So, the whole process starts by digging through the battery bowl (an old Country Crock margarine tub) and finding a set of two batteries that have a bit of power left in them.  Then we need to sync up each controller to the Wii system.  After completing these two steps, the Wii menu popped up on the screen revealing a Mario game in the disc slot.  The boys cooed a bit at the memory of this game; hearing nostalgia in their voices, I said I’d play Mario, even though they were more than happy to trade it out for the racing game.  

My sons know immediately what the six various shaped buttons on the controllers do in each video game.  If compared to a library, their access to how these function in different video games is instantly at their fingertips, as if accessing information from the cloud; however, I’m pulling from tall clunky card catalog drawers.  After they explain the functions for Mario, I nail down two options that I think most usable: how to run and how to jump. 

Then, as we play and I see my lives quickly disappear, they suggest that I push “A” if I’m about to lose a life.  I powerfully push the “A” button which puts my little Liugi character in a safe bubble that floats over the action until I bump into another character.  That action pops my bubble, and I’m back in the game.  Will and Liam are impressed at my rather dexterous use of running and jumping, but I don’t have the timing down to jump on something to smash it or gain points or coins or lives.  I just run and jump. 

When I discovered the power of that bubble to save me from falling into a boiling pit of lava, my thumb began to throb at my urgent, ardent overuse of the “A” button.  When I mentioned this, Liam explained that I only need to lightly tap the button.  This is how the two of them played, lightly with slight movements of their fingers on the controller.  Their bodies remained still as they maneuvered through the levels.  On the other hand, my body was writhing and wriggling as if electrical stimulants kicked my leg up and out when I leaped out of the path of a bad guy.  Then, my arms flung the controller up above my head when I momentarily forgot that jumping is controlled by simply pushing the “2” button.  The bodily flailing accomplished nothing.

We played Mario for over an hour, and with their help, I regained lives and even got piggyback rides from their characters when it was easier for the boys to toss Luigi on their backs than to explain to me how to get out of a sticky situation.  The racing game brings us to the same room, but it’s every racer for him or herself.  What I realized this night is that with the Mario game, we are all on the same team.  It behooves us to help one another and advance through levels.  I might be leaning toward this game as a preference; the camaraderie was cool.  If only we could incorporate some winter scenery in a few of the levels.