Gaming Inpact Real Life?

I've never been big into playing games. When most people of my generation were really getting into Atari (Yeah, laugh it up.) I was getting married and having kids. I lived in a small town so there wasn't much outside influence to introduce us to new technologies.

By the time Nintendo started getting big, my girls were overwhelmed with school and after-school activities and just never got into the game craze. It didn't hurt that the mere thought of spending hundreds of dollars for a game system freaks me out.

Before Will, Steve got into computer games for a year or two. But most of them were driving or killing. Didn't reallly interst me. He and the girls had a brief affair with SIMs and some sort of Zoo building game. The concept of those I found more interesting, but I spent so much time on the computer at work the last thing I wanted to do to relax was play on the computer.

Recently, I found myself playing FarmTown and Farmville. And I'm addicted. It's not just the attempt to manage the farm to produce and grow as fast as possible. I love the interaction of your friends and relatives. I love how in FarmTown, when I'm bored, I can go work on total strangers farms and make money. For my type of personality, where I need to be doing something constantly, it's nervanna.

So, today I was driving to a shopping center and I turned down the entrance lane. On either side of the road there are rows of closely planted trees -- just as they appear on many farms. And I kid you not, my fingers started tapping the steering wheel like I was harvesting them. I think I even visulized little fake fruit in them.

Yeah, my first thought was, "What a lame human you are." But the more I thought about it, the more unnevered I became. If playing a farming game for 1-2 hours a day for a week or so will make me start reacting to the site of rows of plants or trees (with an acutal physical response) . . . what does playing a killing game 3-4 hours a day for months on end do to one's automatic response?

Are there people out there in the shopping malls, parks, driving down the road that see something that makes their trigger finger jerk?

How scary is that?