Video games have nearly always been a part of my life. When I look back, video games were present at many seminal moments in my life. This is one of them.

When I was in high school, Mike, a close friend, lost his mother to cancer while he was in university. His father became incredibly depressed and bizarre, and my friend felt he was unable to stay at home. His siblings felt the same. During holidays for the next several years, they wouldn’t even go home. He would stay with my family during Christmas, and would meet his brother and sisters at his uncle’s house for Christmas Eve.

During one of these stays, tension was at an all time high in my home. My own parents were about to split up and my sister was pregnant while still in high school. We spent most of our time smoking cigarettes at the local coffeshop just to stay out of the house, and we would spend all night playing video games.

Another friend, Dane, was staying with his mother during a very trying time in his life. After going back to high school for another year so he could go to university with his girlfriend, she had dumped him totally out of the blue one day during his freshman year. Crushed and depressed, he was trying to get himself together emotionally.

One night, we all got together for a night of video games where we played Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr.

Dane, a fan of the San Diego Padres, was shit-talking the entire game. “Oh, just wait for Tony Gwynn!”

“Tony Gwynn is on deck! You’re in for it!”

“Here comes Tony Gwynn! What are you going to do?”

Mike, of course, immediately plunked Tony Gwynn in the head.

“What the fuck! Fuck you!”

And from that moment on, any time Tony Gwynn got to bat, he was hit by a pitch, regardless of what else was going on in the game.

This went on all night, and we never laughed so hard in our lives. For one peaceful snowy night in the middle of Newfoundland, three friends were kids again without a care in the world.

A year later while we were both at school, Dane borrowed all my Nintendo 64 games, which came back in a trickle. Eventually, I popped over to his apartment to fetch the remaining five of six games...but I left the baseball game. He still has it, for all I know.

The Secret History of Me and My Video Games

Part 1: My Father and the Warp Pipes

Part 2: Doomed