"Winners Don't Use Drugs"

There are some things in life that always seem to hit you funny, like finding that list you made in high school of the qualities you were looking for in your perfect mate. My perfect man had to have long, dark hair, be completely into Metallica, and willing to let me have Saturday nights to watch the Headbanger’s Ball with my friends, Christina and Christina. It’s 14 years later; both Christinas are gone as is the Headbanger’s Ball (at least the one that I loved), and the only thing my husband has in common with my high school age “perfect man” list is that he is, indeed, a man.

I was struck funny by something else this last weekend when Jeff and I decided to take Rachael on a family fun adventure to a place in Issaquah called Illusionz. Illusionz is one of those places that are an indoor activity center for kids during the day, and at night turns into the only place suburban teenagers can hang out and hook up without having to find a shopping mall. We went on a Sunday afternoon and the place was absolutely dead, which means no waiting in line for us. Yippee!

I took Rachael over to the enormous little kids play area filled with climbing decks, ball pits, slides and tons of colorful matting. After performing some championship wrestling holds on her in order to remove her shoes per the play area rules, she took off like a carjacker with Jeff in tow. As the two of them enjoyed climbing, sliding down, and more climbing, I decided to peruse the arcade. I was never much of a gamer, but every now and again like to partake in electronic video action as long as the controllers don’t have too many buttons and require a tremendous amount of skill and coordination.

Illusionz is a cool place, not because of the variety of games or the laser tag arena or even the obstacle castle that my munchkin spent most of the day conquering, no, this fun center rocks, because they carry Tron, Centipede, Mrs. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and a few other games left over from the olden days (i.e. the ‘80s). I spent several Illusionz card credits trying to best my former Mrs. Pac Man score, unfortunately the game there had somewhat of a delayed joystick. Yeah, that’s right, the joystick was delayed. I did a few rounds of Tron, one quick game of Donkey Kong, and after indulging my nostalgia went to look for the shooting games.

I agree with most of the concerned mothers out there that some of the games produced nowadays contain way too much violence, but I also grew up in Idaho, so shooting can be something fun to do as long as your target isn’t human. For the record, I have never hunted anything, but have cousins who do. Personally, I believe the only correct way to hunt is to arm the game animals, dress the hunters in their underwear and cover them with cat piss, and then it’s a fair fight.

I took up a few shooting games and noticed one quirky message on all of the machines. After a good round of using the plastic rifle or Uzi with the neat, see-all scope to blow your opponent to hell and back, the game would end with a recap of your hits that included your kills, misses, and accuracy percentage. Then a weird message, complete with a government seal from the DEA would appear that blared “Winners Don’t Use Drugs”.

I guess this is true, winners don’t use drugs, but losers don’t necessarily use drugs either, and what about the people in between who aren’t trying to win or lose, they may or may not use drugs depending on the situation. I guess, according to the DEA, “Winners don’t use drugs,” instead winners take all that drug-using energy and spend it blowing the absolute fuck out of the animated adversary on the video game screen.

I’ve always been amazed at the government’s ass-backward approach to drugs. Most of our politicians live and run on the generous dole of pharmaceutical companies and refuse to make prescription drug advertisements on t.v. illegal, but if a hippie at a String Cheese Incident concert smokes a joint, then there’s a problem. I don’t get it. In my lifetime, I’ve been to alcohol parties and I’ve been to pot parties, and I can tell you that those pot parties never ended in a five-man fight with the police and an ambulance being called.

It’s fine if the government wants to send a positive message to kids, but to do it using a video game where you get an extra 600 points for shooting someone in the head as opposed to the body might not be the most effective means of transmission.

On the other hand, it’s funny. I had a wonderful laugh, which made me feel good after only nailing a lousy 78% accuracy rate. Next time I’ll have to make more of an effort to snipe at the guy’s head as I try my hardest to win by staying away from drugs.