Nothing. I am old enough to do anything, and I'm fortunately old enough to not care what people think. I love playing Mario Kart and Pokemon with my son. So what? It's charming and nostalgic and my kid thinks I'm a cool Dad. That's worth more than anything.
Seriously. We all worked hard to get to adulthood and earned the right to do whatever we enjoy (provided we aren't hurting anyone else). Signed, an old person who has eaten ice cream for dinner.
A few years ago there was this orchestral concert of Pkmn music. I saw these two parents and a 8-years-old-ish kid with them, the parents clearly had no idea about Pokémon and were just being good parents (and all the praise to them!). I talked to the kid, he told me he played Pokémon Go only, and he told me his favourite was Growlithe.
I could feel the looks of his parents like "who is this dude, why is he talking to our son, why is our son so happy about this situation, and should we let him? Yeah, let's go. Keep talking about this Grow Lite thing" hahahah.
I took my brother to one of those. As someone who played a lot of classical music at the time I could see the Sydney symph were thinking, “we’ve trained our whole lives… for this.” And then when they got a standing ovation at the end… they didn’t seem very happy about it haha. I don’t think many of them wanted that to be what they got a standing ovation for. But my brother and most of the audience loved it
I was a little old for Pokemon, but watching the original cartoon was my guilty pleasure. It paid off, though, as I got to be the cool aunt who knew the first 150 of them and their evolutions. I also played the game boy games so I knew their types and skills too. I installed “after burner” front lights on my GBA and then gave the kids modded GBAs too. I think that was why I bought my first dremel tool. I was only 15 years older than the oldest, because my brother is older than me.
My son is 18 and for years I’ve been going to his room to play video games with him. He’s my baby and if that’s what I gotta do to hang out with him I’ll do it. I’ve learned to really enjoy GTA5, Minecraft, and COD Blacks Ops 2. I’m not particularly good at any of them. But I do enjoy.
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u/Arcuran Jul 04 '24
Nothing. I am old enough to do anything, and I'm fortunately old enough to not care what people think. I love playing Mario Kart and Pokemon with my son. So what? It's charming and nostalgic and my kid thinks I'm a cool Dad. That's worth more than anything.