Ok, maybe we haven’t evolved as much as I thought. Here I was thinking that things had changed a lot in the past few years with girl gaming stereotypes, and suddenly this dude came along and burst my accomplished bubble. I was in Tahoe for the weekend, staying at a cabin with 9 other guys and girls. I had just spent a glorious 6 hours boarding in the best powder I have ever been in. I returned to the cabin, showered, got in my comfy clothes and pulled out my PSP to play some Lumines (this was pre-Patapon by the way). My boyfriend Chewbroccoli and I have been in this neverending competition to be ranked 1st on the single player mode (he really needs to get his own PSP : P). Anyhow, he had just beat my score at 58,000 so I was determined for the rest of the night to beat that. HAH! 2 hours later and I was back on top at 75,000. Feeling accomplished, I decided to retire from Lumines for the night and try out some Guitar Hero 3. I was dying to try out my newly developed “expert” Rock Band guitar skills on GH since I had heard it was even more challenging. Awesome. It was then that one of the guys in the cabin started asking me about gaming.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the general questions - “Have you always played games? How did you get into it?” or “Wow, a girl gamer!”. But this guy’s questions just had this weird vibe to them that made me feel more like an alien rather than a “normal” human being. He started bombarding me with questions such as “So, I don’t get it, you play games for fun? Does that mean you don’t do anything else - like sleep? I heard gamers don’t sleep. I can’t believe you just went from one game to the next! I’ve never met girls who do sports. That’s so crazy! Why are you into sports? And you do this for fun? Don’t you get bored? What else are people like you into?”. People like you? I felt like I was being analyzed under a microscope in a petri dish! While I played GH3, I tried to answer his questions as patiently and as calmy as I could without yelling out “Where have you been? Under a rock? You dolt!”. But now that I look back on this, it was actually quite amusing regardless of how weird this guy was being. He was in a room with 3 other girls who were only there to snowboard, a bunch of guys who played games like it was their life, and here he was acting like he just stumbled upon a rare 5-legged dog or something.

Quoting him, I guess there still are “people like this” who look at “people like me” and think we are some mixed genetically cultured hybrid specie. It’s kinda sad, but it was also a wake up call that there are still people who are totally unaware. Kind of puts you back on your toes, I guess. But hey, you better watch out becuase us “weirdos” are coming to get you!!!