The self-published book of essays is finished and available for perusal. It serves a duel purpose since the pages can also be used as fire starter on these cold winter nights. As part of the production process Raven’s Eye Press (facilitator for the project), and Lindsay Nyquist (owner/operator) set up an account for the book on Amazon. Go to the Amazon website and in the humorous book section plug in the title; “Silverton Style” to make a purchase. For all you Luddites out there who still refuse to embrace modern social media (and to an extent I’m one of them since I still refuse to use Twitter or Facebook) call this number; 970-317-0044. I’ll get a copy of the book and send it to you.
In theory this is just the first of numerous volumes that’ll see the radiant light of publication one day. I’ll just keep churning this essay stuff out. Then again I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
In the meantime, since I had lots of time to write after I got back from my trip to Austin, here’s an essay my fertile mind came up with about one of the activities that took place on my trip. An interesting perspective for all you gamers out there.
Word Count: 736
Old-School vs. New-School
Gaming
Oftentimes going to a family affair presents you with all sorts of wild ideas to write about. My recent trip to Texas to attend a wedding, followed by consuming copious amounts of tryptophan-laced meat products on turkey-day was the perfect example of this. Not only did my mind come up with a veritable treasure trove of essay subjects to touch upon, but it was also a bountiful harvest of ideas for short story and novel topics to write about at a later date. Whether or not some of these thoughts might actually end up getting jotted down on paper we’ll never know. Get back to me in about ten or fifteen years on that one.
One of the more unique phenomenon’s I observed, as well as found myself involved in, was the way leisure activity participation broke down. My niece and nephew, who find themselves firmly entrenched in their teens years, spent a large percentage of time with their eyes firmly glued to a flat screen TV and thumbs madly punching a game console. Their video game of choice, Call of Duty-Black Opps? The latest version of course. Anybody who’s anybody knows you shouldn’t be caught playing an older incarnation of the game-which may have come out before 2014. How primitive do you people think we happen to be?
After a heated contest in which the two of them, plus another 4-year-old nephew of mine managed to successfully destroy as many enemy combatants as possible while navigating their way through the ravages of a post-apocalyptic, industrial Hellscape, the older of the two nephews mentioned rather casually that I should participate in their next game. At first I actually contemplated doing this, but then I realized I’m not very good at this video game stuff. Not wanting to totally paint myself into a corner with no way out, I quickly declined.
Not more than ten minutes later, my brother-in-law asked if I was interested in playing a game of billiards against him. My sister had just bought a new pool table-which also had a ping-pong table attachment at our disposal off the same horizontal surface. Faster than you can say, “Minnesota-Fats used to hustle a lot of his opponents,” I jumped up from the couch and grabbed a pool stick.
Haven’t played pool in years, but something about moving around the table in an attempt to look like I knew what I was doing gave me a sudden burst of energy. We ended up playing multiple games over the next four hours and after they’d put the ping-pong attachment on the table, I participating in a few of those games as well. I’m not as good at the ping-pong stuff, so I didn’t embarrass myself too much with that avenue of leisure activity. Still no video game participation in case you’re wondering. Maybe you aren’t?
This got me to thinking about the predicament that night just before I fell into La-La land. Why did I refuse to participate in any video games, but jumped at the chance to play some pool, followed by floundering mightily with a ping-pong paddle in my hands? Some folks might be wondering why thinking about this phenomenon even kept me up. You’ll be happy to know that it didn’t. I drifted off to sleep not more than two or three minutes after I started thinking about it. Once I came up with the idea to write about the subject (which is bad enough) I pretty much forgot about the entire situation.
My brother-in-law, who’s from the tail end of the baby boomer generation, also refuses to play any video games. He does like to indulge in the billiards and ping-pong though. As does another sister of mine whose only a year behind yours truly in the age department. None of us older generation folks came close to that video game console during that week and a half in Austin. The older of the two nephews did participate in everything, but that has more to do with his extremely competitive nature and not wanting to lose at anything he indulges in.
My theory on the subject? Us older generation individuals haven’t developed our thumb muscles to a highly evolved state of affairs. Therefore none of us wanted to embarrass ourselves by doing the video games. This hypothesis almost sounds halfway intelligent so I’ll go with it.
