by vulcanjedi

Created on: April 17, 2008

It was sometime in 1976. My buddy's girlfriend told us the 7-11 where she worked was getting a new video game. They already had 2 pinball machines but were replacing one with a brand new game. We had already gotten tired of the pong machine that was in the pizza shop around the corner. Even after they replaced it with the 4 player sports version. So we were really looking forward to something different.

That Saturday afternoon we walked in to the 7-11 and there it was, a Breakout Machine. At first glance it didn't look like anything much different than pong. It had the paddle at the bottom and the ball was hitting blocks at the top and knocking them away. As we played it turned out to be a lot more fun that we thought it would be. We were engrossed in a competition not against each other but separately for points. The action was fast and furious as we battled the paddle and the wall of bricks. The point is we were really into it, oblivious to all else around us. Then our attention was forced on something else, two police officers standing in front of us. We had no idea what was going on when they asked if we saw anything. We looked at them and shrugged and my buddies girlfriend came over and said something like "My God, did you see that?" and she was all shook up and he said "what? What happened when we were playing the game?" She got this nasty look on her face then punched him in the arm and walked away with one of the cops.

The 7-11 had just been robbed. At the register ten feet from where we were playing breakout, some guy pulled a gun demanding money. He got some from the register she opened and then ran out the door. The other cop that was asking us questions shook his head and mumbled something about the video game making people oblivious and then left.

We were going to get back to playing when my buddy decided it would be in his best interest to go see how his girlfriend was instead. Of course that didn't mean I had to stop playing.

Later that day I remembered what the cop had said. How could we have been so engrossed in a video game that we did not see something go down. The machine was off to the side of the entrance but on the opposite wall. Standing there playing breakout we still had a clear view of the registers. I wondered if video games hypnotized people into spending quarter after quarter. I figured I would study that theory further the next day when I went back with some more change.

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