My daughter was getting mostly Ds and Fs in school. She started smoking at six, was up to ten packs a day at eight years old. By ten, she was addicted to cocaine. She became an expert at the use of the Balisong (Filipino Butterfly knife) to stealthily cut the pockets of local drug dealers and get free fixes. Myself, I dropped out of society, joined a nude 'artist' group, and became addicted to Heroin, with a little Opium on the side. I shaved innocent kittens bare, just for fun. On clear days, I torched ants with my magnifying glass, nearly bringing two species to extinction.
Then, in a rare moment together, my daughter and I heard that same song about playing Cat's Cradle by Charlie Chaplin, I think. We stated playing. We had nothing, so we used wound up cat hair for the string (I had LOTS of cat hair...).
It took us months, probably because of our drug induced haze, but we finally got to the 'Manger' move, and quickly progressed to the final 'Diamonds' move. Gaming. Together. We were hooked!
We had a friend, we'll call him Rico. He traded us a nice PC for some, well, stuff we had left. He said he bought it brand new, but didn't need it. It sure looked new.
Anyway, it had a game on it called Red Orchestra: Combined arms. We started playing it. We asked Rico if he could get us another PC, so we could both play at the same time. He asked us what kind we wanted, and in a couple of days, he had it for us! What are the odds - he already had exactly the PC we wanted! I knew that someone upstairs was looking out for us - and I don't mean the helicopters that seemed to fly around my wooded property constantly lately...
Anyway, to make a long story short, my kid and I got so hooked on gaming together, we had no time to continue down the wrong path. She's now top of her class, going to college next year, already accepted into several top schools, and we both kicked our multiple drug habits.
Yeah, gaming is good.
