Will Smith said it best: parents just don’t understand. Most League of Legends players still living at home have trouble dealing with their parents and League . They know it’s your “hobby,” but why can’t you pause it to help unload the car?
I decided to try an experiment; I would teach my mother how to play League of Legends . I do not recommend anyone else trying this, because my heart almost exploded from stress. Getting a parent to understand League of Legends is like trying to teach a dog how to ride a bicycle. It’s not something they would do normally, and it’s incredibly hard to get them to understand. But when they do, it’s the cutest thing you’ll ever see.
For years, my mother has hated my gaming addiction. If she didn’t yell “get off the damn game” while I was in the middle of a League match, I’d be worried she was in trouble. She’d threaten to turn off the internet, bash my computer or many other terrible things. If Doublelift’s mother can accept her son’s career, why can’t my mom at least learn the game I write about?
She was reluctant at first, but eventually I managed to coax her into it by promising that I’d come home for Passover - it’s a Jewish thing. I sat her down at my computer, and logged into my League account. I started her off slow, putting her in a custom game against bots. At first she threw herself into the tower a lot, but over the course of the match she managed to learn a lot. She started to CS, and even managed to kill the Soraka bot. By the end, she said that she enjoyed herself and was ready to “kill some more purple guys.”
I thought it was time to put her into a normal match, which was a gigantic mistake. Turns out she really didn’t learn anything and proceeded to go 1/8 by 20 minutes. I’ve built up a callous wall that prevents me from being affected by toxic players. My mother is a strong woman, but not when it came to the torrent of internet hate flung at her. She was playing Annie in the mid lane and after her fifth death, her teammates started going off. All the usual stuff was said: like “kill yourself,” “feeder noob” and the now classic “report Annie.”
After the game she told me that she was just going to stick to Candy Crush . My experiment was technically a failure, but at least she doesn’t threaten to turn the internet off anymore.
