In the normal course of a year, I make it a point to avoid circumstances that might put me near or in a hospital, a policy which has served me well so far. But on Monday, buoyed by some vestigial notion of being a good brother, I accompanied my sister to her tonsillectomy, making sure to take detailed mental notes along the way. It was an early start to the day, the unwelcome din of the alarm sounding at an ungodly hour, and what I divined through the haze, roughly 30 minutes later, was how primal the hospital feels.
Let me explain. I’m not referring to the technology, obviously, because that was present in spades. It was more the frame of mind needed to function in this environment. There wasn’t any latitude for social niceties–only a desire to make it to the next milestone, the next dotted line to sign, the next time staff calls your name. I had set up shop at a round table and fired up my laptop, when an old dude rolled up in my peripheral vision, stood there for a few seconds, and then remarked, “You like that stuff, huh?” He meant well enough, and I knew the question was a conversation starter designed to highlight the generational divide, an implicit admission that all this newfangled technology was simply mind-boggling.
“Yeah, just a ton of work,” I exclaimed with a sigh. “So nope,” I continued with a chuckle, “I don’t really like the stuff.” He acknowledged the importance of work, seemed almost apologetic, and shuffled away. I felt like a douche, because in truth, I was just checking my personal e-mail and browsing the Battlelog to see what had transpired in Battlefield 3 the night before. But the fact of the matter was I didn’t want to connect, didn’t want to swap life stories and discuss what kind of surgery his wife needed. Me and mine–that was the mandate of the moment.
This insularity carried straight into the recovery ward, a sight in and of itself. It was a meat carousel, with groggy patients being swapped out like light bulbs, who all frankly looked like shit. It was a strange juxtaposition of suffering and sterility, set against a chorus of beeping heart monitors. There, too, I wasn’t in the best of moods. After watching the nurse incompetently futz around with the IV drip, then ask me to fetch two alcohol wipes for her, she started to prattle on about cookies she had brought to work. I wanted to shake her, tell her to shut the fuck up and get back to work. But instead I went through the motions, marshaled the few shreds of social decorum I had left at that hour, and affected interest, approximately 6 CCs worth.
“It’s the Cheers bar of our generation,” I explained to a buddy at work today. “Our equivalent of the Lodge.” The topic at hand was gaming and its place in our social tapestry. When I think about it, the in-person happy hours are few and far between–once or twice at most a quarter, as of late. But we burn up the wires on Battlefield 3 at least a couple nights each week, judiciously allotting time to conversation and capping Russian fools.
You will recall my current stance on gaming publically. I’m still going strong, and what I’ve learned is choice of game, while not the be-all and end-all, certainly matters. I tried out Modern Warfare 3 with the same group of people, and it made Battlefield look like the History Channel. MW3 was essentially the Ocho, in comparison, with a shit-ton of flashing lights and guitar riffs heralding God-knows-what and being gunned down constantly. It was frustrating for all, to say the least, and a stark reminder that I’m getting old. These reflexes just ain’t what they used to be.
What’s really striking, though, is how all this online contact has resulted in more offline interaction. More offline talk. More lunches. More discourse about non-gaming stuff. It’s natural, real data, and frankly it’s unexpected. You know what they say, though: you never look a gift horse in the mouth. You shoot it! And then you toss a grenade, followed by a couple rounds from your sidearm.
The Correction. It’s always there, waiting right around the corner, and its mechanics are simple enough: enjoy a series of good days, and you are bound for a patch of bad ones. Surely it’s ridiculous to expect a constant stream of the former, but what’s always fascinated me is the predictability of how the season turns, typically to the tune of three- to four-day increments. Rare is the occasion, for instance, when you can claim you’ve had a perfect month, but this is no revelation. It is simply the price of admission for being conscious.
By my rough estimation, pretty much everything went awry today. Although my formula still holds water, there were setbacks. Imagine climbing halfway up a ladder and being fairly confident in the construction of that ladder, but then having to climb back down to verify the whole contraption’s actually sitting on solid ground. There was harrowing traffic. A speaker sale fallen through. Trouble at the store. Ingredients dropping straight out of the fridge and onto the floor during dinnertime.
These are the travails of suburbia and as such, I’m sure somebody out there would gladly trade these issues for their own in a heartbeat. The fix here is simple. Sleep it off and try for a new hand tomorrow. These are trivial matters, now that I see them plainly listed, and that’s all the more reason to heed one of Al Swearengen’s very best lines: “Stand it like a man–and give some back.”