Shoutout To CJ(Grand Theft Auto)

I grew up following my brothers everywhere, no breathing space. We could play video games from morning till evening. My mom would do her worst and still find us behind the PC after 30 minutes. She would seize the mouse and controllers and come back to see us using the keyboard. That is how we got to know the use of most function keys as well as shortcuts. My favorite was alt + F4. I’ll tell you why soon.

She eventually made a rule where we could only play games during weekends but of course we broke that rule. We would jump from Prince of Persia to GTA to Pes to Mortal Kombat to Need for speed to bloody roar to crazy taxi to God of war, … ughh! the list was endless. Honestly, at a point, I forgot I was a girl. Our favourite was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it made us so happy. The very day my mom reported us to dad, he disconnected the cables, separated the parts of the computer and seized the controllers.

I was devastated because what now happens to CJ? but my brothers? Stubborn for a reason! Exactly 3:30am the following Saturday, my brothers woke me up for our mission. We didn’t have to assemble them on the desk. We only needed to bring them closer so we could fix the cables and then play our games. We did this for about a whole month and my parents never caught us.

After two months, my dad assembled the PC and warned us to stay away from aggressive games. (I mean he was right, because imagine me chasing my brothers with knife or they rather chasing me with fire). We were just too stubborn. On top of it all, we would also sleep talk every night. He would delete games and restrict access to certain things but we would move heaven and hell to find those games. It started from downloading games to installing them to sometimes even cracking the software.

He wanted us to play Mavis Beacon and Zuma because they weren’t aggressive but come on! big “boys” like us? CJ or God of war or nothing! So, anytime we heard dad was home, we would hit alt + f4 and if you know, you know. No matter how hard he would come and try opening GTA, it would not even open at that point which only meant we weren’t playing that game in the first place.

My brothers call me “seeker”. No, you’re not allowed to say it. Seeker because no matter the digital problem, I’ll definitely find a way. If not to solve it, to make it manageable or to even create an alternative. No matter how complex the software is, I’ll get to the nook and cranny to discover things.

Oh! And the one thing I know for sure is that, at this point, my cursor thinks I hate her because it’s always shortcuts right from when I power on to when I Alt+F4+Enter.

^{my entry to #septemberinleo day 3 prompt}