Electronic Play Toys Through Time - Time Out #311

In our high-tech modern world, everything just seems merely a click away.

Our ever-present personal cell phone makes us feel we could talk with someone on Mars if we really wanted to do so.

Our choices on our home televisions are almost endless, and, yet, we occasionally hear from someone with cable or dish service, "There's nothing to watch tonight", among the hundreds of scheduled programs. Oh, well, folks, that is progress?

So, speaking of electronic gadgets, how about video games? Yes, those challenging screen activities that have been around for several decades. No, I am not a video gamer.

In fact, I have never played a video game in my entire life, dear readers in Our Town and far beyond.

Never, as in never played one. No, not once!

This video game fact is being disclosed to you by me, a former avid pinball machine player of the 1950's and 60's in Our Town. I used to frequent every establishment in our city limits that had one or more of those electronic devices. In fact, I probably could have told you back in those days, just which machine was located in which store, along with something about how to win "free games" on each particular machine. Those early "games of skill/chance", as they were termed, captured most of my spare time hook, line and sinker. They also kept most of my nickels, dimes, quarters, etc., too, as I madly flipped away, pushing their electronic flipper buttons.

But not so with the video games that followed, even when our children had some of them in our home. For whatever reasons, I simply never had the desire to play one, and as I try hard to remember ,I do not believe anyone in our family ever challenged me to play them on a video game?

Probably my athletic officiating demands ( I begin my 55th season of high school football officiating next week) left me little spare time to grab a video screen, and click away. Too, I have loved traveling my entire life. Therefore, when our family was not off somewhere seeing the sights, I was at home, carefully planning our next adventure, wherever it was meant to happen over our vast Planet Earth.

You know, life is absolutely full of choices. I frequently venture "outside the box", but I am pretty certain playing video games will not enter my world any time soon, No, not much of a chance to happen.

For that matter, neither will I be playing golf, taking dance lessons, painting a picture, or raising cattle. I enjoy watching all those activities, but don't choose to get involved with them on the personal level.

Oh, well, diversity of activities IS what makes this ol' world go round and round and round. Just sayin;...