When was the first time you were grounded from video games?

My uncle had been visiting my house, and it must have been Christmas time because the snow was involved in my poor decision-making that day. However, in the depths of New England, snow could just as easily mean Halloween or Valentine’s Day as it does Christmas. Either way, my uncle brought his shiny new Nintendo Entertainment System and his collection of games to my house for the weekend. As said before, I never owned my own video games in those early days and often relied on cousins, friends, and the NES my parents stored at my grandma’s house to get my fix.

Trust me when I say I took my gaming time seriously and never once for granted. When I had access to a video game console, I treasured my time with it because it could be months before I got the chance to play one again.

Either way, this was a two-step punishment, which no doubt led to my mother coming down hard on me. I had worked my way through my uncle’s entire collection over two days, trying each of the games and seeing what I thought of each of them. However, I saved the very best for last because it was titled after another toy I was very much into at the time: Monster in my Pocket. Just before I got around to playing it, my mother told me it was time to turn off the Nintendo because we were going bowling.

I asked for a few more minutes because I wanted to play the last game, but nope, it was time to turn it off. A brief argument later turned into me not getting to play the game for the rest of my uncle’s vacation, not because I argued but because I apparently threw the controller down in a rage. Maybe my memory is a bit biased on my part, but I remember simply taking my hands off of the controller upon the threat that I couldn’t play when I got home and letting it fall to the ground.

Still, that translated to slamming in my Mom’s’ eyes, and nothing could convince her otherwise.

However, we went to bowling, where I behaved myself as usual and earned myself a reprieve from the punishment. That is, until my father and uncle started a snowball fight in the parking lot, something I was apparently not allowed to partake in. In my excitement, I threw a snowball at my uncle, missed and smacked a nearby car. Orders came from my mother to not do that again, but when my father and uncle did not stop, neither did I.

Nope, I lost the Nintendo again. The thin ice I have been balancing on at the bowling alley split open, and I sank right to the bottom. Mom wasn’t interested in how they were also doing it, I was told specifically not to, and I just didn’t listen.

Pretty typical story. Kid gets exposure to video games in his own house, misbehaves and disobeys when he is taken away from them, and he’s punished. Nothing too out of the ordinary, although looking back, the first punishment was based on a false claim by my mother, and my uncle and father were just as much to blame for the second one.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/01/07/when-was-the-first-time-you-were-grounded-from-video-games/