My Dad, The Secret Gamer

During my younger years my dad owned an import/export business. This meant that our home was full of productivity devices and gadgets that a non-business household at the time would not have: typewriters, fax machines, even a Telex (Wikipedia).

In my memory, "Dad" was mostly an image of his back, sitting in an office chair, writing tiny, barely-legible words in his notebook, and punching the keys on the various machines nearby.

"Daddy is diligent, and smart" - thought innocent 5-year-old Kat.

He was the stereotypical Asian dad - serious and reserved, always away at a business function, and came home smelling like cigarettes and strong Chinese liquor.

So it made me chuckle when I realized that my dad was probably not that busy, nor as stoic as I remembered.

Because we had a lot of devices at home, my sister and I were very comfortable with machines and knew how to operate them. Sometimes we would spend an afternoon pretending to write business correspondence, our little fingers tapping away on the typewriter, making a click-clack melody with the flying typebars.

We would also pretend to be high-end store clerks, using my dad's carbon papers and a heavy-duty piece of cardboard to "swipe" a customer's black Diner's Club card. (Yes, I am aging myself here)

At some point, we were introduced to a new calculator that my parents bought for my dad's business. It was a small Casio with different modes. Best of all - it made sounds!

As a pianist wannabe since the moment I was born (I'm pretty sure this is true), I loved this calculator and always took it out from my dad's desk drawer so that I could make music.

Besides making sounds, the calculator had another feature where if you hit a button, a string of random numbers would start scrolling past the digital screen, marching towards another number on the left.

I had no idea what that was, but I liked watching the numbers march. Some days I turned it on when I was bored and could stare at it for hours.

After a lot of random button-smashing, I figured out that this was a game where I was supposed to attack the numbers coming furiously from the right, preventing them from hitting my homebase on the left. (See reference photo below)

This was horizontal Space Invaders, presented in the form of digital numbers.

and this was how I became a gamer.

Only in recent years did it occur to me that all the times my dad had his back towards us, was probably spent deeply immersed into this little calculator game.

There were other clues too - the frequent trips to the stationery store, where various Nintendo Game & Watch were on display.

Not to mention his prolonged stay at the bathroom, during which I could never find my starter GameBoy.

Or when I bought him his first touch-screen cellphone, he was giddy with excitement because I installed a mahjong app that he could easily play with finger taps, no tile shuffling or dice rolling required.

My road to Gaming started with my dad, who was a secret gamer because society expected him to be serious, hardworking, and be a "grown-up".

But to be honest, I like much more the dad who wins at Archery in Wii Sports, who randomly shouts at his tablet because an AI mahjong opponent took a tile he needed, the man who stopped what he was doing to watch me play through Final Fantasy X.

I used to be afraid of calling myself a gamer, or to mention to my relatives that I work in Games.

but not anymore. Gaming runs in my blood, and Gaming is where I belong.

-------------------------- # To Be Continued # --------------------------

This is Part 1 of my on-going series about Gaming and how games impact lives.

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