I suck at DDR

Everyone has to have a first blog entry. Most everyone else gets to post about something deep, dark or meaningful for their first post. Not me. I get to tell you about Dance Dance Revolution, my apparent lack of motor skills and how a 17 year old can beat me with one hand tied behind his back and one leg only marginally functional. He may as well have been blindfolded; it really wouldn’t have made any real difference to the eventual outcome.

Picture a PlayStation 2 or 3. Add the appropriate mix of cables, TV’s, CD’s and remotes. Mix in a pair of rectangular 4′x4′ sensor pads that are divided in the same manner as a tic-tac-toe game. In each segment there is some symbol with the center square of each edge row or column containing an arrow, making for a left, up, down and right arrow combination.

Next, add in some Anime-inspired characters on the TV that bend and gyrate in a futile attempt to emulate Britney Spears in her prime (they fail dismally at it, but it does make for entertaining viewing). The whole idea of the game is that the TV screen will show a sequence of arrows and you, the victim participant gets to try eye-leg co-ordination by stamping on the appropriate arrow at the appropriate time. As the final ingredient of this looming disaster, picture some remixed dance-club techno-inspired soundtrack: you get to select the level (Beginner, Stupidly Difficult, Insanely Difficult, Completely Fucking Impossible), watch the Japanese versions of Britney do their thing, and then attempt to emulate it.

This is where the blindfolded semi-comatose 17 year old comes in. Apparently that’s approximately where my level of ability is at.

You see, the whole thing is that I got roped into this by my wonderful girlfriend. She’s a teacher and track and field coach at a local school, and decided to have some of her track team over for a spaghetti dinner. As it so happens, they’re devotees of the cult of DDR and I therefore had to be inducted into its sublime ways. The team took it upon themselves to prove just how completely inadequate I was in DDR and selected their most inept student of DDR, Max, to heap scorn upon my fledgling abilities. While I was slipping on the mat desperately trying to not trip over my own feet all the time muttering obscenities, Max was casually tapping his feet and demonstrating just how much I sucked at the Beginner level. To complete my public flagellation, other team members then selected the Insanely Difficult level and continued the lesson in humility.

I suck at DDR. My life will never be the same.