Sure I'm angry. Let the shorter humans play with what they've piled into their own Visas. Being addicted to Nintendo and relishing the company of ten-year-olds are not synonymous.

Few remember that we children of the sixties--not Baby Boomers, but those of us who really were children in the sixties--had to grow up without Nintendo. As a child, I amused myself for hours with paper, pencil, and a few cracked wheels of Spirograph. I'd knit potholders and stand wanly at the windows, waiting for the bookmobile to arrive. High point of the week? Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. Plus we had those Von Trapp kids to think about, with their devilishly clever Sound of Music dance routines.

The curse of the sixties suburban childhood, of course, was that playtime was too intellectually challenging, too creative, too emotionally fulfilling. Struggle and reward. Struggle and reward. I peaked in fourth grade, reaching the unheard-of reading level of turquoise in SRA. For that achievement I got both Person of the Day and Nap Fairy. The other kids couldn't get up off their mats until I tapped them with my flower. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

It's no wonder I'm burned out today. I don't know what amusement is. I have zero hobbies, zero extracurricular interests. On the weekends, I don't throw clay, make dollhouses, do laundry, even. I'm burned out!

Adult life, I'm finding, is one long wait between meals. I don't know what's happening to my body, but I eat one potato chip and it flies right to my upper arms. I think about food all the time now that I can't have it. "Do I get to eat yet?" I ask myself every minute of the day. And when I finally do sit down at the table, it's "How much did I eat earlier? How much do I eat now?" (Do you remember the lunches--just lunches--we had in grade school? Bologna and American cheese on Wonder bread, squirt of mustard, Frito-Lay corn chips, Hostess Twinkies?) 

Now it's only when I play Nintendo that I know bliss.

The perfect Saturday begins around two in the afternoon. A few palaces, a few goombas, and suddenly, refreshingly, it's time for the evening pay-per-view movie. In six hours I've eaten only a few handfuls of Trader Joe's barbecue chips and five Dannon low-fat pineapple yogurts. And half a muffin. And two Lite beers. So what? During that time I've also done an hour on the hated Combi Cycle 2000 stationary bike, which faces the Nintendo.

That's right--we Nintendo as we bike. See how productive? Struggle and reward. Struggle and reward. The good thing is, I'm now addicted to exercise. How many adults do you know who've done at least an hour of Nintendo five times a week for the past two years? My resting pulse rate has gone up ten points, and I feel terrible. But look what I've accomplished: Super Mario 2; Super Mario 3; Dr. Mario (level 24, fast); Legend of Zelda; much of part 1 of Bart Simpson Versus the Space Mutants.

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