The movement control order in my country brought about new opportunities. For the fathers within my circle of friends, it meant more time at home and so an idea came to mind. What if, just what if, we could spend a few moments together as friends once again, to re-live the glory days of our youth? What if we could once again pick up our gaming gear and proceed to game all night long? I mean, there is no work to go to the next day. We could not leave the home so this makes it the best time to re-live the good old days of having LAN parties.
LAN parties?
In case you have not heard of it, we use to connect our computers together via LAN (Local Area Network) cables for games such as Red alert, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Counterstrike, and DOTA. Those were the good old days and I was in college, so were the group of fathers that I was playing with. We were excited and so we set a time (normally after the kids head on to bed) and we got our games downloaded in anticipation.
But Alas, It was Not Meant to be
I like to think that my group of friends or bros are great fathers. We put our family first before everything else and so when the day came, not all of us were prepared. Some of our children did not cooperate and playing starcraft with a 5 year old is not easy. I mean, how can you move your armies around with the child constantly asking you about the reason to your actions.
"Dad, is that uncle Tim's army?"
"Yes Sweetie"
"Why are you attacking him? That's not nice."
"It's a game and we are having fun."
"Well, I'm not so sure he's having fun if he's getting hurt."
I was apparently not the only one, some had crying babies and the game was paused more often than it was supposed to. Eventually, we all gave up and decided to play another day. We set a time, and came back the next day for another round.
First the kids, then the commitments
We tried a few nights later but after a few more times of playing, some of us had to attend to our commitments. The lockdown has not been kind to all our businesses and some have started to spend more time at work.
Some of our better halves have also started to miss us and as such, we had to spend less time online and more time offline. This went on and on until we have all stopped coming online.
This was not surprising at all and I suppose it was understandable. I think as we grew older, we just wanted a chance to go back to the good old days. While it was fun for a bit, I think we all knew that our responsibilities will not allow us to play for too long.
That being said, perhaps we will get that opportunity again once our kids head off to college. But for now, we will just have to swap our gaming time for something more meaningful, like putting our little ones to sleep.