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Or How I Learned That Fighting Zombies Is Another Way to Say I Love You

I have a new hobby these days – a new form of therapy, if you will – I’ve started killing zombies. It seems like an obvious choice for me in retrospect, but there were a few obstacles that had to be overcome in my own mind, first, and it wasn’t the inherent rights of zombies that I was concerned about.

Of course I’m talking about the Left 4 Dead video game franchise, what did you think I was talking about?

For all that I’m surrounded daily by video games, I don’t play an awful lot of them. For years, in fact, I hid behind a strict Three Button Rule, something that I’d established back in the flannel-colored far reaches of the early nineties when it became all too clear and quickly that this thing they called a video game – much as I had loved it since its birth – was already surpassing me and my limited hand-eye coordination. In fact, this might have been back before they really had hand-eye coordination, I can’t be sure. But since the most advanced video games of the time were made up almost entirely of 3 buttons + joystick, I could at least pretend to hold my own even if I didn’t exactly shine. For a while, though, Galaga and I? We were glorious.

So my kids have heard the story of my downfall more than once, usually when I was making excuses not to come and play something with them. The game was called Golden Axe. I always played the dwarf. Sometimes there were others with us, but it was usually just Mike and I, grabbing a slice of pizza at the mall as a much needed break from our intensive class schedules at LBCC (I think it was Improv and History of Theater), plugging quarters we could ill afford to spend into various machines at Tilt. I think he generally played the sorceress, because boys like things with boobs, even when they’re pixelated. All I know is that it wasn’t my first time playing that game, and the controls were simple enough – joystick for movement, jump button, fight button, and a special magic button that I was free to mostly forget about, since it had to build up power and couldn’t be used very often anyway.

And so we played that day like always, but something was wrong. When the enemies approached, I would push that button as fast as I possibly could, my dwarf would jump up into the air, raising his axe over his head and then… death. Over and over again. It wasn’t until after I’d lost my precious three lives (this is what’s wrong with kids today – unlimited lives) that I realized what had gone wrong was inside my own brain – I’d been hitting the jump button the whole time. Poor little dwarf was jumping up and down with all his might – trying to confuzzle the enemies I suppose – and they sliced him up with their swords every time because he never actually attacked.

That was another whole button.

Thus the Three Button Rule, three buttons being the glass ceiling of my video game career, and really, the toll of doom for it as well. From that point onward I stuck to mostly watching, and sat through hours of Mike playing Sonic the Hedgehog and Street Fighter. Because the only thing I liked more than video games were the boys that played them.

Nearly twenty years have gone by, and I’ve since married a video game player and spawned three little gamers of my own. Their brains are wired special for this shiny new age, for living here in the future, for unlimited lives and unlimited combos. And it’s a good thing, too, because they just keep adding buttons.

Obviously, I was never going to be the parent who looked askance at a video game passion. And I’ve been a patient confidant through the years, I have sat through whole conversations about platformers and MMORPGS and other words and phrases and combinations of alphabet that I don’t always entirely understand. It has stretched the limits of my definition-through-context abilities, for certain. And sometimes I’ve listened with enthusiasm, and sometimes only with half an ear. But through it all I have remained the video game’s biggest fan and supporter. From a gamer’s standpoint (albeit an ancient and outdated gamer) I see the allure, the power of being able to play a part in a story, effect its outcome instead of always relegated to the role of passive observer (as students too often are in many classrooms). I see the exciting challenge of having to get better and smarter in order to move up the levels. I see the triumph of victory, the satisfaction of completion and a job well done. From a homeschooling parent’s standpoint I see huge educational value there.

(I don’t believe that television rots your brain, either, for the record. I believe that bad television rots your brain.)

And I already knew from being around the edges of it, how clever and quick-witted and strategic and adaptive my children have to be in order to excel in these games that so many others dismiss as a waste of time. I’ve seen their passions grow and inspire them to transcend gameplay into new directions and applications. I’ve seen my eldest son start by teaching himself to read with the help of Diablo, and eventually work his way up to knowledge of the companies that make the games, the intricacies of finance and marketing; who bought out who and which one is going down in the shaky economy and why and what might save them. I’ve watched my youngest practice his writing and spelling by helping an online friend from Sweden learn English as they play Garry’s Mod together for hours. And I’ve been awed by the amazing and disturbing artwork my daughter has been able to create within a video game modding engine.

But sitting down and actually playing with them, letting them take the lead and show me their world, has still been an eye-opening experience for me. Humbling, too, since while my skill has increased (to a level I never would have believed I could reach) it will still never compete with theirs. Strategy, instinct, team work, calculation, persistence, camaraderie, quick wits – I have developed a whole new level of appreciation for the cleverness of my offspring and their generation. Not to mention the speed of their hands.

But I’m still not really sure what it was about the games that finally caught my interest, seeing as how the kids had been playing them for ages. Partly I think it might be attributed to the stage of grief I’m in – after my Dad died I went through a time when the angst and alienation of music like Rob Zombie and Rammstein was the only thing that eased my pain, so I suppose its fitting that violent video games commonly associated with teenage boys would be my chosen form of working through the anger parts of my mother’s death. Perhaps not psychiatrically sanctioned, but strangely effective. Then, too, I think I should give my daughter some of the credit – her tastes are similar enough to mine while her approach and perspective are so different, she is forever causing me to give things a second look that I would’ve dismissed without her. Like pink, when she was 4 and thought everything in the world should be that color.

So my daughter is the one that I approached initially, asking her if she would teach me how to play. It was a good choice – she’s taken her role as my teacher and in-game protector very seriously. She is all nurturer, she shepherds me through zombie hordes, heals me before I’ve even noticed I’m injured, stands by my side in a swarm caused by boomer bile (that I brought upon myself with an itchy trigger finger and a nervous disposition), and patiently explains which gun is which. Again. (Boomer: a very fat zombie with a … very delicate digestive system.)

She even once risked her “life” to save me from a Witch. (Witch: terrifying member of the special infected that sobs eerily and remains passive until you startle her, and then she runs at you and claws you, incapacitating in one hit.) The Witch terrifies me – grown woman that I am, fully aware of the line between fantasy and reality – as I creep up on her and she turns from her sobbing to look up at me with her red glowing eyes. I have to fight the deep down instinct to turn away from the screen, to not meet her gaze, as though she can see through my avatar and into my very soul. One game early on, I was cheerfully following my daughter through the level, in and out as she checked deserted rooms for supplies. Upon entering one she began to yell, “Go back! Go back!” But it was too late. I’d already followed her in, and in my panic, had wound up in a corner of the very dark room. In the opposite corner, situated in such a way that I would have to move straight toward her in order to slip back out the door, was the Witch. And she was looking right at me.

“Come out, Mom, quick!”

“I can’t! She’s too scary!”

Maybe this is a good time to admit my biggest weakness. Maneuvering. Doors are hard for me sometimes. (Jumps are worse, and are generally my undoing.) Especially with a Witch about to go berserker on me at any second, and my sense of panic rising. Without hesitation my daughter’s favored character – Ellis, the loveable redneck, no one is allowed to play him but her – bursts back into the room with a hail of bullets, taking on the witch singlehandedly and taking her blows so as to enable my escape and continued survival.

I felt oddly touched at this demonstration of daughterly devotion, as I so often do when playing this game with my children. For so long its been my role to hold their hands, to lead them through difficulty, to take hits in order to protect them, and to introduce them to new worlds. Having them step up and take that role now in my life, even in a virtual sense, is a very powerful thing. Plus it gives a person a pretty good idea of which child will stand by her side in a real zombie apocalypse, and which ones are likely to leave her to the flesh-eaters.

Once I’d gotten my feet wet and proven that – at least on Easy difficulty – I could limp along without hindering my group too much, the rest of the family soon joined in our games. Nicky is a completely spastic player – zooming hither and yon, leaping and backtracking in a blur. He’s all about trying a game to its very limits and beyond. He bulldozes full speed, jumps into places where no one is meant to jump and shouts “Look at me, Mom!” while I’m over in the corner, fighting desperately for my life with all my concentration.

“Not now, dear. Zombies.”

But then he’ll turn around and talk me step by step through how to cr0wn a witch with a shotgun, or he’ll encourage me to try out the chainsaw. He pushes me to do the things I don’t believe that I can, and talks me through them with a gentleness and patience I didn’t expect.

(The chainsaw is great fun if you’re looking for all out carnage, but I’ve found the musical thunk of a guitar crashing against a zombie head to be surprisingly satisfying.)

Sometimes my husband and I play together without the kids. Our usernames accidentally rhyme with each other – we’re ShadowHawk and Jabberwock – which make us officially too cute to live. On the original game he generally plays Zoey, because boys like boobs even when they’re pixelated. I always play Francis, because my inner child is a badass biker.

It is a whole new test for our marriage, as we traverse ruined buildings and dodge giant Tanks together. (Tank: a really, really, really big zombie who can throw cars at you among other very bad, bone-crushing things.) While he’s still better than I am at most in-game things, we’re both equally outmatched by the children, and this bonds us. We work together well in pixels as in real life – most of the time. Sometimes communication is a problem, though, in both places.

“TANK!” he yells, and I begin looking around madly for a Tank on the side of the wrecked semi-truck where I’ve landed when we jumped from the crumbling overpass. With no Tank in sight I finally manage to battle my way through the horde to his side of the truck, which is where the Tank is jumping up and down on his now incapacitated head.

“Oh. You meant the Tank was on YOU.” I consider this pertinent information, withheld for no real reason. I resentfully set about killing the thing and rescuing my damsel-in-distress husband, the poor communicator.

“Uh-HUH!” He says with irritation evident, with the “duh!” of the moment clearly implied, underlined, and exclamation pointed. As though his meaning should have been clear simply by his tone of panic.

Well. He might have a point.

My eldest son plays with us from time to time, though his interest has already moved on to other games. He plays as he approaches life, always in a hurry to see what’s next, confident that the people who love him will catch up eventually. He can always double back. But he’s often in the room when I’m playing with others and he smiles wryly all the while. He calls up his friends to announce my first ever “rage-quit” (Rage-Quit – when you quit out of a game because of anger or frustration, whether with or without the banging of keyboard, mouse or controller.) but then he brags, too, about his Mom the zombie killer. I’m rather a new animal even to his more worldly friends’ experiences, and when they come over now they all seem eager to catch a glimpse of this strange phenomenon, a video game playing mother. He admitted to me once that he’s torn between pride and the irritation that its taken me this long to enter his world.

He’s been inviting me for years.