You know, I was never good at team sports. The only sport I was decent at was Karate and I was never that interested in the physical part of it. I liked sparring because I liked outthinking people .. it was kind of like chess, except when you lost you got hit. Anyway, I was never into football or baseball or basketball or anything like that .. but when I discovered Photon here in OKC something clicked with me. I want to say our arena opened in 85 or so when I was in 7th grade. I played one time and was HOOKED. I was 14 then and working at a concession stand and making decent money and I blew a lot of it at Photon. Games were $3 for a 6 minute game and then on the weekends they offered a “Zappy Pass” which was $20 I think for all day so I would show up at 10am when they opened and play as many games as I could until 1am … 15 hours of Photon. These days I get winded climbing a couple flights of stairs, haha.

When I was 16 my family and I went on vacation to Chicago and my buddy Jeff went with us. While we were there, a Photon center opened in Chicago. We went and man we were cock of the walk. I mean, we were scoring 4x what everone else was. Of course everyone else was new and we had been playing for a couple of years. At one point the two guys working there cornered us and challenged us to a duel for honor or something equally cheezy that only people who were a little too serious about Photon would dream up. So the two of us played the two guys working there that day and we slaughtered them. I mean, we completely embarassed them. It was so awesome.

I was so good at Photon that it made me give up wanting to be a ninja or professional breakdancer when I grew up. I was going to play Photon for a living. Maybe I could like travel around for the company and put on demos or be a Photon tutor or something … okay not really but I was really good at it. And then one day Photon closed down and they turned our center into a used furniture store. And let me tell you I missed Photon so much I used to go in that furniture store and walk around pretending like I was looking at futons or bunk beds just so I could be in the building. And then one day it burned down and that was the end of that.

There is a guy building a new retro Photon center just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. People are talking about it. I am sure I will go up there when it opens, maybe not to relive the glory days, but at least to experience it one more time. But not for 15 hours straight, I can pretty much guarantee that.