Several months ago, I went to my local Army Surplus store to buy a hat. Not just any hat: a boonie hat. One of those sweet cloth hats you see army guys wear. I got the idea from, of all places, a video game. My character in the game wore a boonie hat and I thought it would be cool to have one of my own. My own fashion sense could be a great place for the real battlefield to meet the virtual one. I found the hat I wanted, looked in the mirror and tried it on. What I felt next came as a bit of a surprise.
Before I get to my feelings, I should begin by pointing out there are a few key differences between my virtual and real world selves. In the virtual world, I am a battle-hardened veteran, faithfully serving my country in many conflicts. You name it, I have been there: I stormed Normandy Beach (35 times and counting), witnessed Pearl Harbor, held the line in the Battle of the Bulge. I patrolled the perimeter at Khe Sanh, sought and destroyed Charlie at Hue during the Tet Offensive. I am this evening shipping to Afghanistan to help America win the War on Terror. In the real world, I am the veteran of one afternoon paintball war and the occasional laser tag border skirmish.
Peaceful and mild-mannered I may be in the real world, but my virtual self has personally racked up over 600,000 kills: Nazis, “Charlie”, terrorists; all have died by my hand. I am knowledgeable in every firearm, from Civil War-era muskets to modern assault rifles and rocket launchers, both foreign and domestic. In reality, I need help loading a BB gun even felt weird shooting at human-shaped silhouettes. Actual persons injured or killed by me on the field of battle: 0 (unless you count the guy whose tooth I chipped playing football in the snow).
In the virtual world, I have received enough injuries to make the guy from Johnny Got His Gun look like Gene Kelly. I have been shot, fragged, incinerated, dismembered, decapitated, stabbed and crushed. My real world “Purple Heart”? A cut chin sustained when a paintball fragment penetrated my facemask.
My virtual self can carry up to 10 weapons at once (plus grenades) all while running at full speed. In video game wars, I can outjump, outrun and outmaneuver any enemy. I am deadly accurate with everything I use; I could kill you with a hurled fork at a 1000 paces. Strength, stamina, resilience, accuracy: I am (virtually) the Complete Soldier.
In reality, I can run 20 paces without stopping, carry a small briefcase for a half-block and, if I’ve been practicing, hit the wall with a rubber band at 10 feet. But, don’t expect me to do these things in battlefield situations: under stress I am barely capable of operating a ballpoint pen, let alone an automatic rifle. In other words, put me in a real battle and you’d have a corpse (with soggy trousers) in no time.
So, it really shouldn’t have surprised me so much to learn that the boonie hat didn’t look right on my noggin. Anyone who has seen cosplay knows that virtual fashions rarely look as good on real people. But this was different. It’s one thing to wear something that’s not becoming; it’s another thing to feel so completely out of place and even ashamed. I felt real shame–the kind of shame any poser gets when he’s called out for what he is. I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of an actual veteran seeing me–a pasty, squishy civilian whose idea of Basic Training is a 10-minute tutorial–try on a uniform hat. That hat was an instant reminder that, no matter what I’ve learned about war from video games, they’ll never teach me what it is to be a soldier. Military video games strive for realism to be sure, they’re even used as recruiting tools, but they prepare you for battle about as well as a merry-go-round prepares you for horseback riding.
