My high-school best friend and I both ended up in Virginia in the very early nineties, a few years after we graduated, he in the Air Force and I going to tech school. We decided to make a trip back to Connecticut to meet up with the old gang.

Among the people we met were our former girlfriends, the sisters M and C (we’d all parted on friendly terms and were eager to see one another again). And we met M’s new boyfriend, a fellow maybe ten years older than us. Among his several less-than-flattering character traits was an intense dislike of video games and anyone who played them, though I didn’t know it at the time. When he flatly stated that “nobody wins with video games,” I pointed out a few of the benefits that were known even then, such as improved hand-eye coordination, thinking to start a conversation on the topic. He looked me right in the eye and repeated “nobody wins with video games.” Needless to say, we didn’t stay very long after that… the difference between ignorance and stupidity is that ignorance can be cured, and he had no interest in a cure.

That memory always comes to mind when I read something like this, which just proves once again that video games are not only entertaining, but can also be damned useful to the entire human race.