In the cafeteria of the Student Union at Baylor University, I was playing an electronic game called "Auto the Robot." I had played the game once or twice and had quickly lost. In the present game, however, I was doing quite well. With my right hand I controlled the movement stick which moved horizontally, vertically and diagonally. My left hand controlled the shooting button.

The idea of the game was to move about through a room while shooting robots. In this particular game, however, I wasn't shooting at robots, but at little dots. If I could exit from the room pictured on the screen, a new room would appear on the screen and play would again resume. I did this several times.

I answered, "Well, don't you score just by making it out of the room, even though you haven't actually destroyed any enemy robots?"

Neither of us was quite sure about that, even though the score was totaled in the lower left side of the screen.

Suddenly I did something special and all at once the whole screen lit up. Bells began to ring, numbers appeared on the board and a light raced from one number to the next. It appeared I had won something special. I had racked up 19,000 points.

Leah (who had played the game before) told me to press a little button on the game and a voice would come on and tell me what the score was. Before I did so, Leah did a little something and the whole game suddenly ended. I wasn't angry with her, because I had already had my fun, but I asked, "Leah, how come my game is over?"

She realized she had done something to stop my game and she tried to explain. She smiled as she tried to figure out a way of explaining what she had done.

Another man and a child were nearby playing a game like mine. Apparently the man had played the game before, but the child hadn't. The man began explaining to the child that these games were manufactured in Mexico. He explained that since they were manufactured in Mexico, and the Mexicans weren't as smart as the Americans, it took the Americans longer to figure out how to play the games. The man had been playing for some time, but still hadn't figured out exactly how to operate the game. Finally he said, "Well, it's about time we went into the other room."

He was referring to a special room nearby in which people could learn how to play the games.

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