“When I was younger, my parents took me to Mount Rushmore.”

The AMA report warns that gaming addictions are more likely found in children that begin playing at younger ages. But video games are so pervasive, keeping them at arm’s length is about as easy as keeping cell phones from teen-agers.

To the older among us, this video game flap seems all too familiar to issues once raised when Dungeons and Dragons — a role-playing fantasy game popularized in the 1980s — was said to be evil. The vast majority of D&D fans were no more controlled by it than Monopoly, but it was said to be dangerous and addictive (perhaps, in part, because there were wizards and goblins involved) and worthy of warning labels or outright banning.

To those who would ban the game, or place a warning label on it, we would have written our own: “Warning — do not play this game if you’re nuts.”

Doug Wolter is night news editor of The Free Press. He can be contacted at 344-6384 or dwolter@mankatofreepress.com.