I don’t really ask.Ĭolby’s 6 th grade homeroom teacher tells us that Colby is a very bright child, very good at math, very good and reading comprehension, has an intuitive knack for learning. She’s been working there for a little over a year she got that job after we separated, maybe a month later. Her hair is tied up in a professional bun. She’s wearing sensible heals, a button-down shirt, a blazer. Lynne’s already at the school for Colby’s parent-teacher conference when I get there. Eventually he’ll change and find a productive passion, because that’s what happens with everyone, with anyone. Eventually he’ll make friends or get really into handball or Science Olympiad, or something. Plus he’s not even a teenager yet, still a kid. He likes video games, like I do, like Lynne used to. He doesn’t really play any sports, isn’t in any clubs at school. He’s got the faintest, thatched hairs sprouting above his lip and his back is constantly slouched, like his spine is slow to understand his body’s frame. No, Dad, I didn’t get it, he says, looking at the screen with sadness, eyes deflated like pinstuck balloons.Ĭolby’s hitting puberty, which means his body’s changing but it’s changing awkwardly, like a bug squeezing its way out of its dead exoskeleton. It’s strange, and it’s unnatural, something that should not be possible. Legs completely still, arms completely still, head completely still, yet shooting towards us, towards the imaginary frame of the camera, as if propelled by a tornadic gust of wind. The character stands upright, in a resting, static position, but still moves. He places a bomb on the ground, waits, then rolls into it while unsheathing his sword, brandishing his shield. Then he’ll vanish, fall into a black void of unprogrammed nothingness for a few seconds and emerge in a completely different place, on the other side of the game’s map, somewhere the game doesn’t want you to be, some place only accessible after hours of gameplay, after getting certain items, after doing the right things. He’ll take the character, the hero, and he’ll run at a wall, then turn around, walk backwards, jump to the side, slash his sword. When Colby plays the game all logic falls away. You walked forward, you slashed enemies, the enemies died, you got items from treasure chests, you used those items in the way the game told you to use them. When I played this game things made sense. The glitches he shows me, after I’ve asked enough times, are completely incomprehensible. Sometimes I’ll write him a little note–Here’s an Extra Life!, Knock Out The Day!, I Love You, CoCo! These he eats. I’ve started putting fun-sized candy bars in his lunchbox, Twix or Snickers or whatever. Some sort of sandwich, either peanut butter and jelly or salami and pickle, because those are the only kinds of sandwiches Colby will eat. I make Colby’s lunches for school every day. Watch your goddamn mouth, she says, shoving him a bit. She walks him out to her car and asks him what he wants to do this weekend. I tell her he’s been spending a lot of time in his room. When Lynne comes to get him she doesn’t say a lot to me. Colby, come on, Lynne would say, portending anger, but she’d loosen up, and she’d drive backwards, and I’d drive backwards, and we’d all drive backwards like idiots, and my son would collapse in joy. He’d drive his car in the racing game backwards, first unknowingly, then purposely, comically. When Colby was younger all three of us would game together on the system that Lynne and I bought him for his birthday. I feel a sense of kinship with my son, knowing that, now, together, we have this. I used to play the game he’s playing, back in college. He says it quietly, reluctantly, doesn’t look me in the eye. You beat the game as fast as you can, Colby says to me.
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