Grand Theft Generation

Against my wishes to get out of my man-cave and leave the house that afternoon, the urgency of performing the errands overruled the desire to procrastinate - again. It was money matters I have to fix - a yin yang of sorts as I had to pay my credit card bills, while e-mailing the documents needed to claim a raffle prize. 

So off I go to the computer shop that has been around the street since the Triassic times. I still owe them 20 pesos, a due I forgot to pay when they had no change and I promised to return the next time I would rent a computer. That was ten years ago. I come and go as I please nowadays, with the utang apparently forgotten, like the ancient desktops they keep replacing to stay ahead of competition.    

It didn't take long for the attendant to get the documents from my hands so they could be scanned and turned into a digital file. While waiting for the machine to finish reading the hard copy, I saw this young girl in front of me, playing a video game created for prepubescent boys and adults - who have nothing to do but simulate a bandit life.

Known collectively as the Grand Theft Auto, I know very little about the game aside from its seamless world and violent content. I had thought of acquiring a bootleg copy some years ago. But knowing it might interfere with my virtual dollhouse also known as the Sims, to refrain from installing it on my hard drive seems to be the most prudent move. GTA went on to become the hottest selling video game of that year. It even spawned several incarnations because of its open-ended gaming concept, which to this day seems appealing to children who were not even born when the first game hit the shelves - including girls.

And she played like nobody is watching: her burly, middle-aged white trash avatar wearing wife beaters and jeans fired missiles that caused buildings to explode. Then, she used a rocket belt to survey the terrain from an altitude. I do not know what fun she reaps from such game save for being hooked to such mindless violence.

Is she trying to prove that girls like her can always outplay the boys?

The curioser in me would like to scratch the surface and find out where she gets the money for such indulgence, or why, of all the pastimes, she picked something girls her age would never touch. Does she have older boys as siblings? Is she an outcast in class? But, for a gender-bending generation where she belongs, questions lose relevance when you realize how egalitarian and twisted our time has become.

"Maybe she used to be a warrior in her past life." The afterthought lingered long after my 'ninja' moves snapped the image with my trusted phone.

"Or simply, she's a boy trapped in a girl's body." The second theory seems more acceptable. 

There goes another lesbian awakening.

Written for the Round Table Challenge