Duckhunt

The first thing I remember about my arrival to the US is the 1980's Nintendo video game Duckhunt.

We had just crossed the line a few hours earlier, and my Aunt drove us to her friend's home in Los Angeles. I fell asleep on the ride there. I was carried in to the house, and laid down on the sofa.

What awoke me from my sleep was the sounds of a television combined with children laughing. I groggily looked up to see what all the fuss was about, and then I saw something that confused me. There in the living room was a small boy, about my age, playing with a toy guy; but he had tied it to the TV and was pointing it at the screen.

I silently watched, my eyes not yet fully opened. After sometime the small boy looked over. Quieres jugar? I cautiously took the gun as the boy explained to me how the game was played, you shoot at the tv screen and try to kill the cartoon ducks.

It was amazing.

In Mexico we lived in a some what small suburban town called Queretaro. I hung out with the neighborhood kids and played with our toboganes or tied beetles to strings and watched them fly in circles. We had American toys as well, but our interests laid in the outdoors, with the typical pistolero games and playing hide and seek.

I watched cartoons, and went to the arcade with my cousins to play Pac-man. But Duckhunt was different. It was inside.

After that night we left L.A. but that first encounter with the United States and its culture always stayed with me.