How Gaming Helped Me Find The Place Where I Fit In
For some people, gaming is a waste of time. Some people say that gaming can make you violent. Sigh. So some people say. For others, gaming is their happy place. The place where they’ve met their best friends, where they’ve met their friends for life, their partners, it’s the place where they can identify with other people. And if you’re a saucy tomboy, like myself, i.e. a social misfit amongst other women, gaming may be the place where you fit in most, the place where you feel like you belong the most- amongst other like-minded introverts and people who both accept and respect you.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like I don’t fit in well with most people. Part of the reason, I’d say, has to do with my personality: I am an introvert. Yep. I always have been since my childhood. I prefer being alone to exercise my hobbies like reading and learning to play instruments over going out with hordes of friends on the weekend to enjoy more social activities. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t have any friends. On the contrary, I have friends that I talk to almost daily via social media applications and others that I see on a weekly basis at church. And I have other friends that though we don’t see each other often we gather say at a friends house at some point for a potluck and a discussion of an upcoming outing.
But the other reason that I say I haven’t fit in well, is due to the fact that I don’t find that I am like many other people. Here I speak generally though I think this can also be applied separately to women. I didn’t grow up a very feminine girl. And I guess that’s where it all started. I was a “weird” kid. And I was more specifically, a weird girl. My female classmates and I were very different. I grew up in the 1990s, that era where Barbies, pink nail polish, black chokers, the Spice Girls and Britney Spears were all the rage. This is what most girls liked and were into. They would come to school looking fresh out of the hair salon- puffy black curls done, fingernails painted, jean shorts and white tanks on point .
I was on the other side of this spectrum. I dressed like a girl (up until a certain age where I left my dresses to don baggy clothes and my father’s baseball caps) in bright colors and some 90s themed outfits but I was an entirely different class of girl. My world was brimming with my hobbies like art and my passion for learning, I wasn’t as preoccupied with my appearance. I was also a sportsy kind of gal and I was exceptionally introverted.
My peers didn’t spend their recess time the way I eventually did- running amok like a maniac playing cops and robbers or digging my hands into the dirt.They would sit close to the schoolyard in groups of two to talk about girl drama or boyfriends. But probably mostly girl drama. As a result, my first few years of recess were amongst the most isolating. I wouldn’t really talk to anyone. I would just kid watch.
I was a precocious child. In second grade, I won an art trophy for a Chinese dragon that I managed to scrap up from mostly construction paper. It was quite realistic. My art teacher, Ms. Lampertti, was impressed. “That’s really nice. You’re going to the art show.” My artwork was ordained with a white ribbon at the show and I won a trophy clocking in at third place. At some point in my elementary school days, I was tested for the Gifted and Talented program. I didn’t pass, something that to this day, I assume was because I didn’t pass the math section, math being my weakest subject. But nevertheless, I excelled in the arts. I eventually came to play clarinet in the school band. And though I struggled with reading I never let that hinder my love of books, which I proved through the books I came to collect as a child.
I was a curious kid. Because my love of learning was deep, my father encouraged my tastes and bought me toys that fostered my learning. As a young girl, I had a biology set with a microscope. I remember how once I took a black ant from my yard and placed it under the microscope for observation. As I peered through the eye hole of my microscope I came to a single conclusion: the ant was dead. That was literally all that I learned that day. And that obviously made me think about life and death and made me feel pretty guilty about killing that ant. I was a sensitive kid.
I had a compass, a projector with film cartridges of dinosaurs, and my prized possession: a gray telescope with two lenses that I barely remember using as a child, that I kept mostly stored in its large case, before it was eventually stolen.
In addition to this, I was an outdoorsy kind of girl, and I loved being outdoors more than indoors. The words “We’re going to the park,” when spoken by my father made my heart sing. I had just about every outdoors vehicle a girl could want: Barbie roller skates (though I wasn’t a Barbie fan), a pink bike, and a red Razor scooter. My brother had a mini skateboard that I would sometimes ride in the backyard.
When I wasn’t on one of my vehicles, I would kick the old soccer ball with my pop, throw the football around with my brother or fly my Star Wars kite in the spring or summer. In school, I was placed in the Summer Enrichment Program and I would play you guessed it: sports. I wasn’t a fan of cheerleading. I used to play basketball with the other kids. I practiced so much that I even learned how to shoot the ball and would score with my back turned towards the net.
But despite my talents, socially I was quite inept. I didn’t really talk much in class or even during recess. This made me a target for bullying. From an early age, I became a victim of bullying by women. One of my most painful childhood memories, is one where I went up to these girls who I assume were my classmates, to see if I could spend time with them at lunch. I remember gathering up the courage to ask them one day at recess. My legs carried me over from the closed street where we were allowed to play to the front of the school where these girls had snuck off to, to be alone.
Step, step, step. My stomach turned upside down. My hands were probably balled into a fist and ripe with sweat, as I marched on. My mind racing with thoughts of how this encounter would go. Would I make two new friends? Would we end up playing together? Or would we sit down and talk about I guess girl stuff? What would happen?
Perhaps I was already expecting the worst. But looking back at my reaction, I’d say not really. When I finally arrived and walked up those gray steps, I faced them both, think I said something like, “Excuse me, I was wondering if you wanted to play with me?” Or perhaps it was something more like, “Excuse me, I was wondering if I could join you guys?” In either case, I waited for a moment and received my reaction, a dead tone “no,” followed by a laugh by both girls, and a side eye roll by one of them. This is what I remember.
The walk back to the schoolyard, where I probably spent the rest of the period going over that scenario in my head, was one of the longest and most difficult. I think I even shed some tears on the walk back and tried to wipe them off as fast as I could. What made me feel worse was that I had finally mustered up the courage to initiate a friendship or friendships and the result was a backlash. The experience I think left me even more disillusioned and reluctant to try again.
As I went on into the upper grade levels, third grade and above, I was bullied by other girls who felt insecure about themselves. They picked on me because I was an easy target, a lonely girl, who represented everything they wanted to be but weren’t, in their case that was-skinny. I was a really skinny kid and one of my classmates was well heavier than she obviously wanted to be. She bullied me, again in the schoolyard saying things like “You’re so skinny I hate you,” or when I finally cut my hair Sigourney Weaver Alien 3 short she said, “You look like a boy.” Needless to say, I felt like I didn’t fit in very well with women.
Though by this point as a grammar school student, I had already played with some of my friends in the schoolyard, a mix of boys and girls, I still felt like I didn’t belong anywhere socially. That is, until gaming came into my life.
My life as a gamer began under my parent’s roof. My father had purchased a PlayStation One (PS1) sometime after September of 1995, when the gaming system was first released on this side of the globe. I’m not sure exactly when my dad bought the console or who it was even for originally but I fell in love with the device. At some point, I was introduced to it and I remember kneeling on the gray tiled living room floor of my parent’s house, the PlayStation One with its appealing box design and dual shock controllers calling to me. The four buttons, each one bearing a different shape on the left hand side, screamed: Press me! Play me! You know you want to! I absolutely wanted to! Who didn’t? Adventure obviously awaited me.
I guess the first person that I felt like I fit in with through gaming was my younger brother Daniel. My afternoons and Saturday mornings were spent dressed in my Under Armor like pink pajamas with my sidekick Daniel by my side. During the week and in general, we tended to well you know, sometimes fight. Like every brother and sister. But not when we were gaming. It’s like we stepped into a different role. We were schemers now, plotting our revenge, drawing up plans against that boss in that Crash Bandicoot level.
“I think we have to go through there… or maybe jump on those boxes to get to that secret level,” he said pointing to the television screen. I nodded and added my own input. Our newfound discovery making us giddy with excitement. Those were the best days of my childhood, when I could sit next to my family, and feel like myself.
Eventually, my love of gaming allowed me to connect with other kids my age. My father used to take me to his friend’s houses, with my brother, like Carlos’ house and we’d find: you guessed it video games! Most of my father’s friends had kids and we would find gaming systems in their living rooms like the Nintendo 64. I would play Mario racing games at Carlos’ house and at other friends’ houses too. Sometimes a mini visit or a quick stop would turn into a social meeting where my brother and I would find ourselves sitting in front of someone’s TV playing Nintendo 64, with new friends.
While my love of gaming grew, I met more kids. But mostly it was the boys who gamed and liked the same kinds of games that I enjoyed. I didn’t play the PowerPuff Girls on the Nintendo 64 for example. Not that there was anything wrong with said game, but I enjoyed different games, like racing and adventure games. And this allowed me to open myself up to having more male friends. It was like rain had fallen over me and had absolved me of all my past hurts with girls.There was no prejudice, no bullying or teasing. I don’t ever remember hearing the words “you’re a girl and girls play with dolls!” or “why don’t you play dress up or play kitchen?”
The reality of these encounters left me with my jaw dropped, as I came to an understanding: guys are more open minded and more lax than women. They’re really laid back. They didn’t care. At least, the guys that I spent time with didn’t judge me for being a girl gamer. They wanted me to take part in that experience. While not all girls got along with the boys, I learned at an early age, that to me, personally, being friends with the guys was just the place where I belonged. It became a personal truth to me. I got along with them better (usually), I understood them better, and felt at ease being myself around them. I had finally found a place where I fit in, gaming being the key that opened the doorway to my new social world.
