Video games cause violence. I always thought that was a silly premise; I’ve played video games since I got my brother’s original Xbox - the year the 360 came out - and I’m about as mild a sauce as water. Wouldn’t the over-the-top early 2000’s action movies I grew up on be just as likely to cause violence? If anything, video games are why I didn’t socially withdraw completely during the pandemic. When the lockdown was announced, the first thing I did was crack open my pre-historic (in Apple years) MacBook to cut in, dole out slices, and share pieces of my anxieties with the only friends I had made in highschool: the ones I would cohabitate my room with virtually for the next while.

In Georgia, there are only a few Jewish elementary and middle schools and even fewer Jewish high schools. I was funneled in through one tube, but most kids ended up in the same, slightly larger tube: Weber. Following a Jewish curriculum, the school required at least two years of Hebrew classes. Walking in there on my first day of freshman year, a classmate from 8th grade and I made a break for the pathetically sized, loud yellow couch in the back right corner of the classroom. We squeezed on, barely enough room for two scrawny teenagers, and watched as our colleagues for the next four years trickled in. In the middle of the pack was someone I’d never seen before. I glanced at his outfit to measure my chances: a beat up, sunbleached Georgia Tech hoodie paired with ill-fitting khaki trousers and run of the mill sneakers from years prior. When he took his seat at the closest desk, I was able to make out his face. Most fifteen year-olds haven’t grown into their features and so, look a little dopey. He was no different in that way, but what I noticed was his earnest eyes - the lights were on, someone was home, and the welcome mat had been laid out.

“My name is Sammy,”

 We had a simple exchange after that about school and hobbies. That’s when it came up that an old elementary school friend of mine was looking to make an e-sports club. The walls had disappeared just as quickly as they came into view and that night I went to sleep late, but not for the same reason I had the night previous. That summer, every boy with an Xbox had picked up a new game: Rainbow Six Siege. In my school, playing video games showed a lack of athleticism and a perceived fear of going outside - the only games that got off the hook were games about sports. The issue was never with the content or main objective - to kill other players or defuse bombs - and there was nothing different about Siege compared to other first-person-shooter games, but for some reason an exception was made. Kids who wouldn’t even humor me with a conversation at lunch played with me for hours while we bonded over trying to kill each other. After the summer though, my texts asking,

“Does anyone wanna game?” were left unanswered and I was left hanging from the bottom most rung once more. 

My first move to climb back up was the same; so Sammy and I spent the whole night getting to know each other from thirty minutes away.

Six months passed in a matter of moments. The first case of COVID in the nation, then the first in my state, and finally the momentum I had built turned to inertia; I was bludgeoned with memories of a crash I had been in almost a decade prior, where the only thing that stopped me flying out the windshield was a seatbelt. When I opened my eyes I was no longer suspended in the air. Instead, I found myself in bed, clutching my laptop, and scrambling to convince my friends (and myself) that things would be normal again soon - whatever that meant. The more things inevitably changed, the more I clung to what I recognized as my tether; in online classes I’d feign attention, opting to mute the call and instead play Rainbow Six Siege with Sammy like I had done at the start of the year. It wasn’t ideal, but there were benefits: somehow I was more social from my one window bedroom than I had been anywhere before. Sammy re-introduced me to Aidan - a kid I had talked to about Pokemon in our geometry class two semesters ago. When we were allowed to come back to class fully masked and vaccinated, I didn’t recognize him: he was so much taller, but that was really the only way he had changed. After getting past the facade of someone tan and handsome with curly hair towering over me, I was still standing in that classroom having the same conversation. What made the process easier was the lack of physical stature when playing games; I saw a side of Aidan online that I might’ve missed otherwise. As the trio formed, we began to spend our waking hours talking to a group of other ninth-graders who lived a state away in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I don’t remember many of their names on account of time elapsing, but I wouldn’t have been able to leave the desert as the waters parted without the girl who shares my mom’s first name. Sammy and Sue started dating roughly one day after they first spoke to one another. There were so many names and voices to remember, but she was different than most; other than Sammy and Aidan, no one cared about life off-screen, sharing only what the web-cam captured. Sue though, didn’t mind talk that excluded strategies or rankings, and leaned like a sunflower towards what was real and heavy. “The Atlanta Boys,” as she endearingly called us, only made it up to Chattanooga one time before the world slowly flickered back on. After that, Sammy, Aidan and I greeted hallways and classrooms with muddy soles seeking refuge from the late autumn rain.

The more time I spent with the boys in one room all together instead of three scattered across town, I no longer needed the solace that stationary objects gave me. I made the longest lasting connections of my life playing games, but that could only take me so far. High school progressed and I preferred to experience the people I love in places where you can sit, make out each other’s features, and give open invitations. My days started to fill and I had less time to play games, but I did sometimes wish for disaster to give me another chance before graduation. I didn’t realize that every lunch and sleepover and binge of Community I spent with Sammy and Aidan was that chance; the summer Sue lived in my basement was that chance. Since COVID died down, I’ve been forced to walk alongside mankind at a distance less than six feet, but I still let the gap fill until there no longer is one. I cohabitate every space with the voices who gave credence to what they had heard from their speakers, saw on their screens and - for all intents and purposes - knew as me. Without those games, I wouldn’t have known how to navigate such a violent world as peacefully as I do.