I know I’ve beat this drum before.

This time, it’s for a different reason.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the Penn Brad Oil Museum’s Yellow Dog Award ceremony, where my friend, Joyce Cline, was honored. It was a wonderful event.

During the dinner, I sat with longtime Era sports guy Ron Kloss and his wife, Molly, and several others. Ron and I, of course, talked shop.

Ron is one of a group of older folks who meet at Tim Hortons and “solve the world’s problems, just if anyone would listen to us,” Ron jokes. And of course they reminisce.

He and his group of folks got me thinking. Fast forward to 2058 — will the group of folks who are in college now do the same thing?

I wonder what the conversation would be like. “Dude, remember when Call of Duty Black Ops 4 came out? We sat on the couch for four days straight, playing?”

That’s a generalization, of course. Not all kids play video games excessively. Interestingly, the World Health Organization on Monday officially recognized “gaming disorder” as a condition in the International Classification of Diseases.

I know a few people who may qualify. And I know others who play often, but still manage to carry on a life, too.

One 20-something former reporter at The Era would sit and her desk and hum the theme song for a game called Mario Kart. I didn’t know what it was until she told me.

I am not against video games. My daughter plays something called Skyrim often. I just ponder what the gamers’ childhood memories will be.

Tuesday morning, I got a message from an old friend who is going to be visiting the area from out of state. I’m excited to see him. I’m sure we’ll talk about childhood memories — swimming in the creek, playing badminton in the front yard (and he always hit the birdie on the porch roof), sled riding in the winter, hiking in the woods with about a dozen of us climbing trees and other dangerous tomfoolery that children nowadays don’t do. One time we made our own slip-and-slide out of a long piece of plastic tarp and a hose carrying water from a nearby spring. With the water at a natural 54 degrees, and the plastic routed into a giant mud pit by the time we were done with construction, our slip-and-slide became known as the slide-and-bleed. That was so much fun until Dad saw the backyard …

Anytime we came home with scrapes or bruises, we got cleaned up with some hellish monstrosity called “White Lightning” that I was certain was meant to cause so much pain you’d never be foolish again.

Alas, that was not the case.

Never once did I hear my mother say, “I should sue the property owner.” Instead, it was “if you made a mess, you get back there and clean it up.” And if we got hurt? “You’ll know better next time.”

We’d pick wild berries and eat them without cleaning them, we’d chew on a mint leaf from a ditch, we’d find a vine to who-knows-what and swing from it. When the weather was bad, we’d play in the basement of my parents’ home. They had an old Victrola, and we’d listen to old records, play Hot Wheels on the floor — stuff that kids did then.

Video games became popular when I was younger. We had an Atari and some games. But we didn’t have our own television to hook it to, and could only play when Dad wasn’t watching television. Maybe that’s why we never got “addicted?”

Or could it be that instead of playing at life, we went outside and lived it?

(Schellhammer is the Era’s associate editor. She can be reached at marcie@bradfordera.com)