Growing up, my family was somewhat unplugged from media. We did own a TV, but only watched for short periods of time and only a couple days a week, we didn’t listen to the radio that much (though time was made for “music appreciation”), we owned no Nintendo or Nintendo-esque games, and didn’t even have computer games until I was in middle school.
Ok. Now that you feel sorry for poor deprived me, I can continue with the surprising fact that there was one computer game with which I was familiar as a girl: Oregon Trail.
I use this as evidence for my theory that playing Oregon Trail was ubiquitous of my generation’s (or at least half a generation’s) social education. If you are at a party of twenty-something’s and stuck for a discussion topic, bring up this game of adventure and faux history and you will 1) boost your humor points and 2) buy yourself 5-10 minutes of conversation.
Yes, Oregon Trail in all its primitive-graphics glory was a cornerstone of American education. Everyone can commiserate and reminisce about having a member of their fictitious party break a bone or two, having their wagon wheels float down the river, going hunting and shooting 3000 pounds of buffalo (even though you know you can carry only 50 back to camp, thus explaining, in my mind at least, why buffalo went extinct in the West), and let’s not forget the perennial favorite: dying of dysentery.
I think dysentery was funny mostly because none of us knew what it was until we went home and asked our parents, who then wondered what company we’d been keeping. And it was funny thereafter because what child doesn’t appreciate a good dysentery joke?
But I digress. It is strange to me that a primitive game about crossing the continent should have become such a shared experience. We may not have all watched the same TV shows (most of my free time was spent outside building forts, having pine cone wars, arranging picnics, and putting on endless plays with the same plot for my long-suffering parents), but one thing I do share with others of my generation: that glorious moment when the computer screen announced that my party had arrived in the mythical Oregon.
p.s. Did Oregon Trail inspire young people of my generation to move to that state? I wonder if there’s any way to tell if a positive correlation exists?