ShareThisYou'll have to bear with me this week; the column may be a little slow. I've managed to hurt my writing arm.
It's actually a sports injury. Yes, I was playing tennis. Several hours of tennis. And bowling. And golf. And lawn darts, ski-ball, table-hockey, and horseshoes.
That's right. I hurt myself playing video games.
This came as a surprise to no one more than me. I am not prone to injury, which is to say, I am not prone to engaging in activities that lead to injury. Some activities beg for injury. You rarely see anyone in a full leg cast who does not have a skiing story to tell.
I am not into these sorts of activities. I enjoy leisurely pursuits such as reading, writing, and eating high-fiber breakfasts. I am a cat person, with all of the sleeping and belly scratches that the term implies.
One sedentary activity I particularly enjoy, as a man-boy of a certain age, is video gaming. This enjoyment has evolved over my lifetime from a love of stomping on mushrooms to a love of shooting zombies, all from the comfort of my couch.
Video games have dutifully kept me injury-free for more than twenty years. You rarely see anyone in a full leg cast who has a video gaming story to tell, though he will likely be playing video games until the cast comes off.
A favorite aunt, understanding my desire to remain both intact and couch-bound, bought what would seem to be the perfect Christmas gift this year: a new video game console. Only this console is different from those I've known before. This is a Nintendo Wii, which involves jumping and flailing.
While traditional video games involve throwing, swatting, jabbing and slicing all from a reclined, well-blanketed position, the Wii requires that you wave a controller at the television to cause these movements. It is truly a revolutionary system and it has moved millions of units since its release last year. As such, millions of Wii users can commiserate with me when I say, ow.
Throwing, swatting, jabbing and slicing are all motions we're familiar with. They are not, however, motions we are accustomed to performing for several hours at a time. And as millions including myself have learned, repetition plus unfamiliar motion, multiplied by gleeful enthusiasm, equals pain.
Baby-boomers, in particular, are feeling the burn. Drawn to the Wii as an accessible system, they may not know the arthritis they're in for. As children, they managed not to put their eyes out with new Red Ryder BB guns. As adults, they risk throwing their backs out with video games.
Regardless, no one can say the Wii doesn't sell. It is selling so well, in fact, that other consoles may begin to move in this ache-inducing direction. By next Christmas no home will be complete without a Microsoft Ouch-Box or Sony Painstation.
Until then, I'll quietly nurse my Wii-Tennis elbow and rest comfortably in the knowledge that I'm certainly not alone. But if anyone asks, it's a sports injury. It was a marathon game of bean-bag toss. And of course I won. A champion plays through the pain.
(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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