Video Game Response

The first video game I ever played was with my cousins in Michigan.  They had brought their Gamecube from home and one windy day when it was too rough to go tubing on the lake, they insisted we play.  There were my two older cousins, Sara and Julia, probably both around thirteen at the time. And the ones who had brought the Gamecube, John, my age, and Janine, a year younger.  I was 5, and pretty confused about how this was going to play out. We all sat on a rug around the 12 inch TV perched on a short table. John put the small game disc in and soon enough all the Mario characters were racing around a track.  I had opted not to play this round.
“We’ll show you how it’s done” little Janine had told me.  I rolled over so I was laying on my belly looking up at the screen.  The speakers on the TV didn’t work too well but I could still hear the chimes when one of the players took the lead or got bonus points.  I mean as far as I could tell, it looked pretty easy. There weren’t too many buttons to push and they looked like they were having fun. And if a 4 year old could do it, I could do it,  I told my 5 year old self. When the round was over, I took Julia’s remote. She told me I would be the character “Peach.” I was expecting an actual, round,  edible -looking peach to pop up. When the game started, I looked for it on the screen, but it was nowhere to be found. My little mind thought, “ there’s a red man (Mario), a green man (Luigi), a mushroom (Toad), a Princess. Where was the peach? I let out a sob. “There isn’t a peach” I whined. Sara and Julia laughed.
“Peach is the Princesses name, honey!”
The screen went dark.
“Did she die?” I said.
“No the games over, dumbo” John teased.
The tears came back.  “But I didn’t even get to play!”
I spent the rest of the rounds out, watching them play. My first time ever “playing” a video game wasn’t successful, but at least I figured out that Peach from Mario wasn’t a fruit.