Since my folks don't buy me games for Christmas but give me money instead, I buy the games for myself - I've been doing this for the past 10 years or so, but to date the most special Christmas game I received was a 40 - year old dream that came true - (background story) I've wanted to be a veterinarian ever since I was 16 years old, which dates back to Christmas 1970 when I used to play veterinarian with stuffed animals and makeshift vet tools in our basement, which I had set up like a pretend animal hospital, complete with a chest of drawers topped by an exam table in the main room that was separated by a pegboard divider that was nailed to the beam in the ceiling, on the opposite side was my tiny office. Beyond the main room was a metal picnic table that served as the OR table, headed my an old lawn mower motor in with a couple of lengths of garden hoses were inserted into the motor's openings to serve as the gas machine's oxygen and anesthetic hoses, this was separated by a curtian nailed to the ceiling beam, this curtian separating the hospital cages that were made from my sister's outgrown crib. Off from my office a bit was a 3 tier metal kitchen shelving unit which I had attached lengths of discarded babydoll's playpen netting to in order to create makeshift patient cages - I wanted this pretent vet hospital to look and feel as real as possible - that is, until I got that special Christmas game, Vet Emergency (from Legacy Interactive) in Dec. 2001. Although I never felt any emotion (love, pity, etc) when I played veterinary in our basement with these stuffed animals, when I was several hours onto playing Vet Emergency on Christmas Eve, the game seemed so real that I was actually feeling kind of upset that the animals were hurt! And on the morning of Christmas Day I was ready to continue where I left off on the night of Christmas Eve, but as I was still kind of worked up about the sick/injured pets, I was verbalizing out loud, sort of whiney as I approached the computer in our studio to finish Vet Emergency (Mom who was working in our kitchen next to the studio where the PC was, told me to knock it off, as my whining annoyed her), but I gritted my teeth (figuratively) and I completed Vet Emergency. After this I felt a little bit better, and as 2002 started its early months, I began to feel better and better increasingly having gotten through Vet Emergency and knowing that "I Can do it!" - be a veterinarian, even if it's in a computer game. After the first several months of 2002, I played Vet Emergency a few more times and each time, I felt even more better and better, never again getting worked up emotionally about the sick/injured pets, as I had grown accustomed to treating sick/injured animals (even if its in a computer game) and by the time summer 2002 arrived, I was hungry for more games like Vet Emergency.
