Atari 2600, I Love You
Valentine’s Day is once again upon us, so I thought I’d share my
memory of one of my first loves – the Atari 2600. And when I say “first
love,” I don’t mean “childhood toy that provided many happy memories.” By
“first love,” I mean “object that gave me my first - and only – hickey.”
And, no, we didn’t go any further. I’m not that kind of boy.
 Flashback
to 1982: Roger, one of my best friends, was an electronics whiz. This is
the guy who built a working Tesla Coil just to torment his cat. (He was a
whiz, but I didn’t say he was bright.) Anyway, Roger’s newest project was
to try to get the world’s fastest 100-meter time in Activision’s
Decathlon. To do so, he disassembled an Atari joystick and combined the
switches with a block of wood and an electric drill. The theory was that a
wire attached to the spinning drill bit would ‘slap’ the switches fast
enough to max out the ‘power’ bar on-screen, giving Roger the world’s
first sub-3 second 100 meter sprint. After having his fingertips shredded
for the 80th time by the impromptu weed-whacker, Roger shelved his
project. However, the broken pieces of the joystick remained on the
kitchen table just I arrived with the rest of our weekly D&D group. And
here’s where our story actually begins.
As our game began in earnest, I found myself growing bored with what
was going on. (I played a cleric and was only needed when one of our party
was in need of a quick Cure Light Wounds spell. I was the team medic so
often, my character might as well have been named ‘Hawkeye.’)
Looking around at the pieces of the broken joystick, I chanced upon
the joystick’s rubber “sheath” – that black rubber plunger-looking thing
that slips over the stick and base. (A 2600 condom, as it were.) After
tossing it up in the air and having it fall to the table like a big
suction dart a few times, I looked around the table, screamed “Look! I’m a
unicorn!” then stuck it directly to my forehead. I pranced about the table
and got the laughs I wanted – except from Roger, our now-glowering DM.
Roger called me a “stickhead” (or something that sounded a lot like
that) then reached over and yanked the stick off with a POP. There was an
uncomfortable pause as every eye stared at my face and every jaw dropped.
Then the laughter began. The
“fall-away-from-the-table-in-danger-of-peeing-yourself” laughter reserved
only for those times when one of your friends has done something
galactically stupid.
I ran to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. There, in
the center of my forehead, was a perfectly round red dot about an inch
across. I had given myself a hickey with an Atari joystick.
Now, this is NOT the kind of accident easily explained to your
parents. (“Well, you see Dad, there I was with a joystick stuck to my
head…”) Even worse, was trying to explain to the entire student population
of my school. (“So there I was, facing down a gang of Klansmen bikers…”)
After about 2 weeks of Hellish junior high school torment (made even
worse because I didn’t have a girlfriend I could blame it on), the damn
hickey began fading away and, eventually, so did the taunts of
“Hickey-Head.” I learned a valuable lesson from that incident that I’ve
taken to heart: “Never stick things to your face that might leave
embarrassing blemishes.”
Nope, now I stick them to OTHER parts of my body.
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