My wife and I are both in our mid-thirties. We have two kids, one of whom is in college, but we must look young, because we still get carded in restaurants, bars, and even at the market. It happens so frequently, we’ve made it into a contest, to see who can get carded most often, and in the most unlikely circumstances.

This last weekend, I pulled ahead in our contest, when I was carded at the mall, while attempting to buy a video game.

“Wait.” I said to the cashier. “You’re carding me for a video game?”

“Yeah,” he said, “It’s an M-rated game. I have to.”

“I’m 35,” I said. “This is hilarious.”

“I’m sorry, but my manager is standing right there, so . . .” he said.

“Well, I don’t want to be a dick, and I don’t want to get you into any trouble.” I said. I reached into my wallet and handed him my ID. “But isn’t this sort of lame?”

The manager nodded. “It’s the stupidest thing in the world, and it’s all because of the Grand Theft Auto thing.”

“Hot Coffee, right?” I said.

The cashier handed me back my ID, and turned around to get my game out of the Big Drawer of Games We Don't Want People To Steal.

“Did it strike you guys as a little weird that parents groups and politicians were totally fine with the violence and criminal behavior in GTA, but as soon as their precious little children – who shouldn’t have been playing the game in the first place – could see some crappy simulated sex, they lost their fucking minds?”

They both laughed. It was clear that this was a regular topic of conversation in the store, among employees and customers alike.

A young couple walked up to the cash register next to me. The guy excitedly held a copy of Madden in his hand, while the girl – clearly a long-suffering Xbox Widow – patiently waited with him.

“I mean,” I continued, “don’t they know that their precious little children have access to far more explicit sexual material online? They’re worried about a simulated polygonal sex act while little Timmy can get all the bukkake he wants with three clicks?”

The guy next to me stifled a laugh as the manager finished ringing them up.

As they walked out of the store, the girl said, “What’s bukkake?”

The three of us at the counter didn't try to stifle our collective laugh.

“That’s not even the worst part,” the manager said to me. “Check this out: if I sold a minor alcohol, I’d get about a $300 misdemeanor fine. But they’re trying to pass a law in New York and here in California that would make it a $1500 fine and a felony for me to sell this game,” he held up the game I was buying, Dead Rising, “to the same kid.”

“That’s fucking retarded,” I said. “Laws like that have already been struck down in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Illinois!”

“Oh, we know,” he said, “but that’s not stopping them from trying in pretty much every state.”

“Thank you Jack Thompson,” I said.

The cashier laughed. “That guy’s an idiot.”

“And get this,” the manager said, “if a kid comes in here and tries to buy an M-rated game, we have to tell him that he has to come back with a parent, but when he comes back with a parent, I can’t sell the game to the parent, because he’s going to give it to the minor.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” he said, “try to figure out the logic there.”

He handed my game to the cashier, who put it into a bag while I signed my credit card slip, no doubt joining a long list of potentially dangerous future criminals who will one day go on a zombie-killing rampage across the country, armed with hockey sticks, pie plates, and cash registers. I held my breath, and wondered if anyone would read the Minority Report.

“Well,” I said, as I put my wallet back into my pocket and picked my subversive contraband, “thanks for being our nation’s eleventh line of defense against children with parents who aren’t involved enough in their lives to pay attention to ratings and decide what’s appropriate for them.”

When I got home, I had my staff send me some Internets with information about this proposed New York law. What I read was chilling:

Do these politicians even know what they’re doing, anymore? Or are they so busy pandering to the authoritarian nanny-staters that they’ve lost their collective minds? It’s bad enough that they think video games are as harmful to minors as alcohol abuse, but they actually want to put people in fucking jail for up to four years for selling a game? The only thing that surprises me, to be honest, is that I haven’t heard any of these opportunists invoke 9/11 (9/11! 9/11! 9/11!) as some justification for this insanity.

Look, I’m a parent, and I am also a gamer, so I know what my kids are playing, and when they're playing it. I also know that there are thousands of parents who aren’t gamers, who rely on ratings to know what’s appropriate for their children. I also fully support retailers not selling M titles to children, the same way I support movie theaters not selling tickets for rated R films to minors. But making it a felony to do so? That’s outrageous.

It's especially stupid and wasteful, too, since it will most likely be struck down in New York like it has been everywhere else, because, according to common sense and the judge who granted a preliminary injunction against the effort in California:

There are real problems facing children in America, like underfunded, overcrowded schools, a criminal lack of health insurance, abusive parents, and Hannah Montana. If lawmakers are really going to try to “protect the children,” they should stop wasting their time and our money pandering to those who think video games are the new heavy metal music.

Wil Wheaton has a warm, secret, fuzzy heart. In a box under his bed.