To go back to the days of PONG!!!

Hey Dad,

I’m working on a workbook for children based on my little booklet Taming the Techno-Beast. As I was preparing and doing a little field study I came across a site where you can actually play the game PONG. How cool is that?

Ooo, I remember the first time I laid eyes on that game was at my cousin’s home in Kankakee, IL. Now to picture this correctly you have to imagine me as a young boy about eleven years old wearing tube socks, cut off shorts, and sporting a terrible haircut that my mom gave me before we left our home in Indiana to visit them.

It was a hot summer day, and we played in their back yard until we were sweaty when my cousins Brian and Scott ask us if we wanted to go inside and play something on the TV. Now I had never ever played anything on the television. In fact, the big console television that we and everyone else owned was only used for watching…and even then the picture was spotty and covered in white, static snow.

But I was up for something new and we went inside sat in front of their big television. I can still remember my cousin reaching around  to the back and pulling out a brown box about the size of a boot box. A few wires ran from the box to the back of the television and then he handed me a control about the size of a bar of soap with a knob on top.

I sat there totally unaware of what was about to happen as he turned the TV on and waited for the big picture tube to warm up and an image to show up on the screen. And then I saw it. Two long rectangles on either side of the screen, a dotted line down the center, and a square ‘ball’ bouncing slowly from side to side making an interesting ‘bonk’ sound as it hit the wall.

Here’s the kicker: when I turned the knob of my control…one of the rectangles moved up and down synchronized with my turning. In fact, the game we played was very similar to ping pong from where it derived it’s name… “PONG.”

We’ve come a long way from those simple days…and sometimes I miss them. There’s so much to stay up on now. If we’re not careful our kids will get swept away in some pretty bad stuff. It’s my job as ’da dad to be on guard and help our children through this crazy INTERNET age.

It’s your job too.

You ’da dad,

Todd

PS – Check out the PONG link.