Reddit Challenge story #20

Topic: A story about gaming…

Never in his life did Todd Lobe think that gaming would benefit him in any way. Ever since he was young, his parents instilled in him the idea that video games rotted your brains and could not possibly contribute to a better life. When his friends growing up got Nintendos and Playstations, Todd would always sit off to the side and not play; that was if his parents even allowed him to visit those friends. When he went to college he indulged in drinking and partying but still he avoided games due to his parents conditioning. Despite all that here was Todd Lobe sitting next to his eight year old son, both of them holding Nintendo Wii controllers- how did this all happen?
It began, of course, when Todd married his wife Lisa. Lisa was Todd’s better half in more ways than one; when Todd was shut-off and living the way his parents conditioned, Lisa was always the one who showed him how to open up. It started with their first date when Todd was scared of going to a Yoga lesson with Lisa. He had thought Yoga itself was strange enough, forgetting that he thought it to be a bad setting for a first date. However, Lisa showed him how to truly be open and enjoy himself, and after the first ‘Upward Facing Dog’ Todd had never felt so free in his life: Todd was in love. Their love soon sprouted its first product in their son, whom they named Jeff. Though he loved Jeff very much, as Jeff grew older Todd found it harder and harder to connect with him; Lisa was raising him to be the open-minded, free-spirited youth that Todd never could be and Todd did not want to change that. He needed a solution.
As usual when Todd needed help in a situation like this he went to Lisa, who gave him one simple instruction: go play video games with your son. Todd had initially protested even the idea of Jeff having a video game system but when he looked into his wife’s beautiful eyes he knew she was right. Thus, a nervous looking Todd approached his son playing Wii in the living room; he had seen Jeff play before but in general avoided paying attention. Todd sat down next to his son and asked him what he was playing. Jeff explained that he was playing a racing game where you used the controller as a wheel; Todd was amazed at the way Jeff was able to so easily and simply explain the game and soon picked up a controller of his own.
From the back of the room Lisa looked on as Todd finally picked up the controller; the look on Jeff’s face was worth every second she had worked in her life to reach this moment. Within a few minutes Jeff and Todd were both furiously flailing their controllers around like steering wheels, laughing and joking the whole time. Todd had never experienced a joy like the one he felt then, a mixture of the minor ecstasy one gets from gaming and the truly powerful feeling of finally being connected to his son.