I have heard for a long time about the video game "Guitar Hero." Apparently, it is immensely popular and people log long hours trying to achieve higher and higher scores.

After I finally played Guitar Hero for the first time this past weekend (btw, I was miserably awful at it), I was reflecting on the game during my run in the Santa Monica mountains the next morning. I was ranting, mostly to myself, about how absurd it is that people who have spent a gazillion hours playing Guitar Hero could have learned how to play an actual guitar in less time...and be pretty good at it. We are raising a new generation of kids to be great at Guitar Hero, but not at playing a real guitar. What would Jimi (Hendrix) do? (WWJD?)

But then several other thoughts lurched into my head (running in the mountains is good for that).

1. I am old just for thinking of the Guitar Hero rant.

2. Although I had honestly never heard anyone make this same Guitar Hero point that I make above, it is not the pinnacle of originality and I'm sure many others have made the same point.

3. Should my wife and I be fortunate enough to have a child, I can see myself being lenient with video games like Guitar Hero (as long as the homework's done!) for reasons of parental sanity.

4. Many kids these days are scheduled to the hilt with extracurricular activities, so maybe a mind-numbing video game should just be considered a welcome respite after the umpteenth soccer/baseball/basketball practice, the Chinese lesson, the ballet class, the multi-hour homework assignments, and the rock-climbing gym.

5. When I was kid, I was big video game player (for the most part, in arcades, after I finished my paper routes). I am certain that some older people looked at my peers and me, and sadly shook their heads, and clucked, "Those dagburn kids are throwing their lives away on video games! What a horrible waste. They should instead be ______! " (You pick: reading/doing homework/helping around the house/doing something creative, etc.)

I have become the older generation; I am now saying the same things they were saying. I think this happens every generation...whether it was parents and grandparents in the 1950's thinking that rock and roll would be downfall of the country, or thinking in the 1980's that videogames in arcades were going to ruin all of us. Or, centuries ago, older people thinking that the new generation will never live up to its potential because the kids are too (you pick) lazy, slow, weak, unprepared, inexperienced, etc, etc. It's a timeless story that looks like it will have perpetual reruns.