Sorry Father-in-Law: You’re a Gamer!

Don’t gatekeep yourself out of your own hobbies

The man I wrote this for and his son both love sand castles, so I put this picture here to entice him to click on it. Photo by Chris Whatley on Unsplash

This article is mostly targeted at one specific real-life man: my own father-in-law, whom I know occasionally reads my stories. He’s not technically my true father-in-law, but I’ve been dating his daughter for the last eleven years. I only put that last sentence in there to appease him because he’s quite a technical person, and I would have already lost him if I hadn’t made that clarification.

So don’t worry, your daughter and I didn’t get secretly married without telling you. You can delay that phone call, please.

If you’re not him, you’re still more than welcome to stick around and hopefully enjoy this tale of hobbies, labels, and the weird societal pressures we all enforce on ourselves.

My father-in-law doesn’t believe himself to be a “real gamer,” yet he spends just as much time playing games as anyone else I know. In his earlier days, he was a massive fan of the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons and he still has his original books. That’s about as deep and strong a bit of “nerd cred” as can be earned. He bought one of his children a Game Boy when they launched, and would steal it carefully at night and hide out in the bathroom playing different games. He pretends that no one in his family knows about this, but it’s the…