Code Name: Tulip

I have a confession. I live a secret life. A life that only a handful of people know about. Its a life not many understand.

I am a video game junky. This is something I usually don't readily share with many people. In my normal life, I am a 31 year old accomplished professional--an experienced business woman. To share that I love to gun down an opponent at point blank range on my 25' monitor is somewhat embarrassing, and maybe even considered juvenile to some. And this certainly would not be understood by one of my 70 year old clients. I don't even know that my 30 year friends can understand the pleasure I derive from *snipping* an opponent from a hidden vantage point.

Now, you could easily explain this strange phenomenon away by saying that I must just crave and enjoy the violence, and Lord knows, that for some odd, very unfeminine, unwoman-like reason, I do enjoy the violence. I like the blood and guts (the more the better), it's true; sick and true. But the truth is I like all sorts of video games. Give me a real good sim or strategy game, even a puzzle, and you're likely to lose me for hours, if not days. There's something more there for me then just the violence.

Like everything else in life (just kidding mom,) I can blame some of this habit on my parents. I grew up in a household that looked a little different than most of my peers. My dad not only bought us a video game system for Christmas, he sat down and played it with us. He eventually stopped buying them for us all together and just bought them for himself. To this day, he still plays and owns the latest and greatest Xbox. And though I think he's currently a little addicted (the pot calling the kettle black, blah blah) to gaming, it's one the the things I've always loved most about my dad. That, and the fact that he watches South Park with me, and once yelled at the top of him lungs from a Hampton Inn window "I am the Great Cornholio, I need TP for my bunghole!"

So its in my genes a little bit. And I grew up on video games. I started on a Colleco (sp) System when I was in the 3rd grade, and my friend next door had the Atari. We played games like Asteroids, and Pit Fall for hours on end. I graduated to the Nintendo in Middle School. This is when I first learned that I was pretty good at video gaming. I later moved on to the Super Nintendo and then, after high school, had an epiphany! My cousin introduced me to the genre of Computer Gaming, and shareware-god bless it! He turned me on to my still all-time favorite games, Duke Nukem. It changed me forever.

I grew up with video games and I am good at them too. I'm also a woman, and up until the last 10 years there weren't many of us out there--female gamers that is. Things are different now, especially with the existence of video game consoles, but we're still a minority. In high school I came to love the amount of respect I could command from an entire room of guys by beating them on the Nintendo. I began to harvest a lust for kicking the ass of some cocky guy who thought I couldn't play Serious Sam or Command & Conquer because I was "a girl."I loved racking up the *kills*. It became a competition. A huge Adrenalin rush, and yet extremely relaxing as well. When my marriage began going south a few years ago, gaming became an escape; a place where I could hide from reality. It wasn't a crutch, like a drug so much, but a conscious decision to not deal with the life in front of me-- a comfort from the stresses of day to day life.

My life is different today. I don't play video games quite as much as I used, but I do still play. I no longer feel the same need to live in fantasy, versus reality. But I do still love a graphic First Person Shooter. The bloodier the better.

I don't know why. Please don't think me juvenile. Please try not to judge me. And boy oh boy, don't dare cross my path on-line playing a game like Unreal Tournament. You'll recognize me by my code name, Tulip.

I'll be the one pickin' ya off from a mile away, with a smile.