Today I asked Matthias to teach me how to play his current video game obsession. It is a world I don’t enter very often. I am rather terrible with all the buttons and find the noise a bit off-putting, and there are 3 other people who’d love to play if I put the controller down to watch and knit. Knitting satisfies me, and allows me to hang out and be a part of their triumphs and agonies.

Today, I needed to ask. I needed to enter into his delight, his world, his passion.

I was terrible. I needed to move my ‘body’ with one knob, change my field of vision with another, and shoot with a button. It was amusingly difficult. Move and look. I was utterly undone.

Think of how hard babies work to get their hands into their mouths when they’re first trying to eat all their toys. Think of how a five year-old sits with tongue on lip, sternly frowning as he grinds a pencil into a page of paper while writing his name.

As a homeschooler, a teacher, it was not a bad thing to be a beginner. A failing beginner. It was not a bad thing to be a guest in another’s world.

I’m going to go back to it, at least a few times. I need to give myself a few more chances, and he needs to see me persistently trying. Attempting. Failing and laughing and hopefully learning.