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Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. Games Remember when we wondered how we’d pronounce the ‘2' as we spoke 1999 for the last time? Would it be twenty-00, or two-thousand? Now it’s ‘familiar’. This year’s 20-20 sounds like an eye chart. Eyes. Looking back as well as ahead...
Well, do you remember those compositions in school where the teacher required you to write "How I Spent My Vacation"? Did you abhor that assignment? Me too...and I used to teach Advanced Composition at a private college. Wonder, however, what some of my students would've thought if I'd told them how I spent 1984's New Year's Eve? As the sparkling ball fell, via television, in New York City’s Times Square proclaiming another twelve months had vanished, I realized George Orwell had foreseen very much but not the room in which I'd ushered in a new January. My husband and I and our youngest son went to a golf resort in southern Florida during Christmas break. With uncooperative-for-outdoors weather, we devised ways to use indoor time. A round game-room in the main building had a ping pong table, juke-box type record player, and video games that circled the room. Small children and pre-teens clad in sneakers and jeans waited for turns at machines. Players often uttered words common in movies and by stand-up comedians, as they banged their hands on sides of the noisy boxes. My son thought we should try our hand at using a joy stick. I could never manage the flippers on pinball and felt a personal affront when the machine laughed at me, figuratively, as it announced "tilt". These arcade games appeared to be easier, yet I felt looks might be deceiving. I was initiated into the realm of video games. Because it was New Year's Eve, the coin slots were covered and all play was free. Our son took us to Pac-man where he played and easily gobbled up computerized dots, turned circles blue, racked up points, saw boards shift. So that's how his college expense money was used, we mused. Well, how hard can it be to manipulate one fat stick? My Pac-man was devoured before I figured out how to make him run away. My husband fared somewhat better. For free, we'd seriously try to learn. Small children scooted in front of us for their turn at the machine. We watched them manipulate, with confidence, joy sticks, yet noticed no tabulated score was really as high as their goals. Missile Command had me moving both hands as I rolled a ball. On-screen bullets shot and I tried to defend my cities. This wasn't fun; it was work. I didn't want my cities to be shot down, destroyed. "Run away" I demanded, as I tried to maneuver but the video always set up obstacles I could not overcome. "Damn," I muttered. Oops. My husband and son competed in a two player game where a blip was bent on terminating the 'human' icon. After an hour, I was determined to complete the first board of Ms. Pacman...not a master goal but a possible one. Each time the game outwitted me, hostility and a greater urgency to once again beat a computer chip cropped up. Reluctantly we gave turns to those who stood behind us. We then occupied space at their backs, short as they were, for our next position in line. The ball dropped. Another year was history and I was standing behind a tiny child hoping he'd finish Pacman so I'd have another turn at it before my hand got more sore than it already was. This wasn’t 'fun'! Frustration and defeat is never easy. Even if I’d scored enough to enter my initials into the computer's memory for high points, another eventually will erase that accomplishment by earning a digit or two better. I CAN be more successful than a man-made metal rectangle, said the ego. Reality ruined that esteem. When I got home, I decided if I didn't have my 'mature' image to protect, I'd toss a coin into a machine in the lobby of the local movie theatre as I was so sure if I tried again, NEXT time I'd .... Nah. Eventually I was able to plug a couple of cables right into my private television set, and that distinctive music began. I didn’t have any short people to wait behind, the successes or failures were for my eyes only, and I had the luxury of a joy stick that was so personal it wasn’t even used by anyone else. 2020. With our individual smartphones, my husband and I sit with our younger son’s family and tap in a code. His flat panel, large television set is lit with a specific game matching that code. We enter silly means of identification, and we compete with questions seen onscreen. In our town is the National Museum of Play. If we want to recapture a moment from a long-ago New Year’s, there’s an entire area devoted to ancient games of pin-ball, Donkey Kong, and on... Dec. 2004-2005 Clear Mt. April 2014 Intentional Walk
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Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. glass panes and headboards My palms had moist beads forming; I blotted them on my proper black skirt. A chilly January breeze circled my legs and the hem fluttered. Only my eyes seemed fixed, as I wiggled my black, suede, high-heeled shoes on coarse concrete. Not even the wind disturbed my staring at the top left window of the two-story house. A figure, warm and inside a lower room, seemed shadowy as it slightly pushed a drape to survey me, yet pretended not to be interested. Squeezing my lids to shut out everything except memory of the rectangle behind that upper corner double-hung window, I envisioned its drapes suspended from velvet covered cornices; a double bed's velvet tufted headboard matched. I stood in the street facing the facade yet I 'saw' its other two windows and a glass door leading to a small balcony. Fitting into a Dormer window niche was a sewing machine; I could still picture, in my mind's eye, traces of lint near the bobbin. A nearby satin chaise-lounge collected fabric and finished goods. "Funny looking couch-chair," I informed the cold air. Four entry openings were along a single wall. One led to a master bath, another to the main hallway, while the remaining were closet doors. One closet was neat. Mens' suits sat straight on wooden hangers; jacket sleeves were same lengths. All shoes seemed to look alike (but in several different dark colors) and be arranged orderly. I whispered to the winter wind "but neatness is boring, daddy." The second closet was a walk-in wild place: long dresses, short skirts, petticoats, wide belts, skinny sashes, filmy blouses, starched shirtwaists, floppy hats, feathered caps, platform shoes, ankle strapped sandals, tied oxfords, negligees, chenille bathrobes, wrinkled wrap dresses, handbags ... one only had to pull the chain on the inside light, close the door, and feel 'disappeared.' It would've made a hide-and-seek spot except this room, shared by my parents', was off-limits for that game. An oil painting of a lovely woman clad in satin and bridal clothes, holding a cascade of calla lillies, occupied a large portion of the wall directly above the chaise-lounge. That lady didn't look like MY mother planting Victory Garden tomatoes, washing windows, shelling peas, making mustard plasters for congested chests. Where was dad's bridal picture? Why didn't fathers have oil portraits? On his tall dresser stood a sepia photo of his dead father. Why did they have one big wall-thing of my mother that didn't look like her and then a photo of a dead man? Steamy puffs formed as my hot breath hit winter wind when I, aloud, uttered "why didn't I ever even ask?" A dining-room-type chandelier, centered on the ceiling, sent flashes of color through prisms when the wall switch was turned on. Rotating balls of small mirrors spinning at school proms produced a similar look. Small bottles bearing funny names (Prince Matchabelli, Carven, Chanel) shared dressing table space with tinted atomizers and tortoise shell comb/brush sets. On a velvet, backless bench before a beautiful gilt mirror suspended over these vials, I pretended glamour. All I ever saw my mother do there was brush her hair. She always smelled good but I thought that was just her smell. My father's top drawer had a distinctive woody, pipe-tobacco scent. "Can I help you," the shadowy figure opened the front door and called out to me. "What is it that you want?" "Thanks. Nothing. I used to live here," I answered hearing my own voice echo. Was time, when my family moved inside and made space into extensions of personality, as long ago as the calendar reminded? My brain hadn't processed passage of years. As the door latched, and I was aware I must have looked suspicious standing on a sidewalk just staring at another's house, I mentally recited decades-old dialogue with my mother: "What's that?" I asked. "An atomizer." "What's it do?" I wondered. "Sprays perfume." "Why isn't it called a 'fume spray?" I insisted. "I don't know. It's called an atomizer." "Why's that door different?" I continued. "That's called a French door and leads to the balcony." "Why's it French?" I persisted. "That's just its name. Because of the way it opens." "Can I go outside it?" I queried. "No. I'm afraid you may fall from the balcony." "Why?" I annoyed. "Because it's high up and you're small." "When I'm big, can I go on the balcony?" I questioned. "We'll see." "What's that?" I noticed. "My shoe hassock." "Why're your shoes in that and daddy's in his closet?" I pestered. "It holds them in satin padding. Only my good shoes are inside." "Do you have bad shoes?" I wouldn't let go. "No. Those are my dressy shoes." "Like my patent leather?" I provoked. "Yes." "Why are my patent leather in my closet then?" I demanded. "Enough questions, Lois." My mother adjusted her hair in the mesh snood and we left the room. Snow flakes dropped and I extended my tongue to capture one. The action made me smile. I nodded my mature head to the crosspanes of glass, saying goodbye, and glanced at my wristwatch. In a couple of hours, a shared granite headstone would be my parents' headboard. But for this moment, as my eyelashes felt lace snowflakes touch them before becoming fluid, my mind was filled with the past-familiar of another space they once shared. ©1996 Palo Alto Review reprinted 2008 The Jewish Press reprinted 2008 Clear Mountain reprinted 2015 Eunoia Review |
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