WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

We went there one Christmas for shopping and my cousin recommended the store where he shopped for games. Mum (and my grandma) was the one to get me into gaming in the first place and so while she's not big on games, she was happy to come in and browse with me while I checked out the wares.

Honestly, it had a really nice spread - lots of merchandise, good deals on second-hand games and the layout was crowded but fun to look through. One of those stores where you can tell the person running it cares about the content. The guy at the counter was clean-shaven and kinda cute - I was 15/16 at the time so was trying to sneak peeks at him while browsing. Typical teenage actions when confronted with a cutie, obvs.

Anyway, I found a copy of Harvest Moon (on SNES) for pretty cheap and headed up to the counter to see how much it cost and maybe strike up a conversation with the guy, since I figured - well, he's working in a nerdy store with games, maybe we could shoot the breeze over a common subject and then I could tell my friends at school about the cute guy I talked to over the holidays.

Yeah, no.

I remember this part pretty clearly, because it really hurt a lot at the time. I was pretty shy until I hit about 18 or so, especially around guys, so it took a lot of courage to even start a conversation. So, I put the game on the counter and asked how much it would be. The guy glanced at it, then looked me dead in the eye and said "You don't want this."

I was like... I didn't hear him right, right? I mean, how are you supposed to deal with someone saying something like that? I just looked at the game and then back at him and said something like "Yes, please. I do."

The guy sneered at me and straight up said, "No, you don't. This isn't a game for girls." I was more than a bit shocked and, being shy at that age (and confronted with a cute guy >.<; ) got really flustered, so I grabbed the game and took it back to the shelf I found it, glancing back at the guy who was watching me with this stupid grin on his face, like I was being a good girl putting it back where it belonged (out of the hands of some chick :/ ).

I was mortified and shoved it back on the shelf before heading to where mum was checking out some anime posters (I think they were mainly DBZ and Pokemon ones. I remember a really cool one of Android 18 and 17. It just stuck with me after all these years because I was staring at it trying not to cry. >.<; )

Anyway, she noticed that I was upset and asked what was wrong. I... was kinda stupid and didn't want to tell her, so I shrugged it off and said there wasn't anything worth getting. She went to pay for the poster she'd picked out for my brother, but on the way she saw the Harvest Moon game.

Now, we used to get Nintendo Power magazine and mum would look through the games in the Swap/Buy/Sell area at the back. A while ago we missed out on bunch of games and one of them had been Harvest Moon (which was why I wanted to buy it). She obviously remembered this and grabbed it, then turned and waved it at me like she does when she's found something interesting she wants me to see.

I knew how this was going to turn out, so I was reluctant to go back up to the counter and instead pretended to be looking at another game cover and just shot her a quick thumbs-up. Well, she marched right over to the counter and asked the guy to ring her up. I moved a bit closer to hear better, because I was curious to see if he'd say the same thing to her as he did to me.

He was cute, sure, but not very smart. Cue the same routine. "You don't want that." Mum looked up at him, down at the game and the poster, then back up and said, "Yes, I do. How much?"

"That game isn't for girls. If you look on the back you get to go on dates with girls and you play as a boy. You don't really want it."

Now... my mother has raised 6 kids on her own. 4 of them are boys. She was not dealing with this guys shit. ^.^

"I want it. How much?"

"You can't have it. It's not for girls."

"I can have it. I am going to buy it. How much?"

"Sorry, but I can't sell it to you. Your daughter already agreed it wasn't her kind of game."

Yes. Yes, he just dug himself into a hole of magnificent proportions. Mum used to be very protective of us kids (she's mellowed a bit with age) and she'd seen that I was upset. It didn't take her long to put two and two together and boy, howdy, can she work the vocal range!

She went off, not screaming, but definitely not being quiet, demanding what right he had to tell anyone (me) what they could and could not buy, that he had no right to enforce his own rules on others over what was appropriate for them to play, that he wasn't the game police, that she'd been playing games longer than he'd been alive (not quite the truth on that one XD ) and that she would be talking to his boss about his attitude with paying customers. All sprinkled with a few expletives, of course.

The guy was practically white by the time she was done, and shakily took her money and gave her both the game and poster (probably horrified that some lady dared to talk back!). He then demanded she leave the store (must have got his ego calmed a little) and told her we were now banned. That was fine by my mother who went straight to a phonebox and called the number on the receipt. When it picked up, she asked to speak to the manager, (I'm surprised he passed her over to him) and then explained what had happened.

I never went back to that store, which is a pity because I was later told by my cousin (who was big into computer games at the time and lived in that town) that the guy was gone the next time he went in.

For me, that was the worst experience, mainly because it really dampened my own enthusiasm for gaming at the time, I was embarrassed and crushed by a cute guy (who was an asshole, yeah, but still cute :/ teenagers are stupid, okay?) and then had the added trauma of mum going off on the guy in public (for all that I love that she did so, it was quite embarrassing still.)