The problem begins at a Best Buy in Douglas, Georgia.

Lindsay DeYoung is shopping for a game to bring home to her kids. She picks out a game called Gears of War 2, because she overheard her oldest talking about it on the phone the night before. She waits in line for over twenty minutes. However, when she gets to the register, the cashier refuses to sell it to her.

“Why?” she asks.

“It’s M. For Mature,” the cashier replies.

“And?” Lindsay asks. “I’m over seventeen, ain’t I?” She is. In fact, she’s nearly twenty years over seventeen. And, with her crow’s feet and saggy arm flab, she looks it. It’d be hard to mistake her for a teenager.

“You’re wearing a Cobra Starship t-shirt,” the cashier says. “And you have pink bangs. Those aren’t the signs of a mature individual.” She holds up Lindsay’s other purchase, Real Housewives of Orange County on DVD, to solidify her argument.

Lindsay grabs the DVD out of the cashier’s hand and slams it on the counter. “I’m mature as fuck, you stupid bitch!”

The store’s manager is consulted, but his argument only muddies the water. He sits at his desk and turns a copy of the game over in his hands, a cigar clenched between his teeth.

“Hmm. You both have valid points. The label says seventeen plus, but it also says mature. Hmm.” He looks Lindsay over. “You are most definitely over seventeen, but I have to agree that you’re very immature. I mean, look at you. Your lip is pierced.”

“It’s not even for me,” Lindsay says, her voice wavering like a child’s. “It’s for my stupid kid!”

“Oh. Well. How old is he?”

“Ten,” she says. The cashier and the manager exchange a knowing look. This is a disaster. How long has this system been in place? And how many immature customers have slipped through the cracks? Hundreds? Thousands?

When Lindsay DeYoung’s story broke, the whole video game industry was turned on its head. Under pressure from lawmakers and parent groups, companies like Blizzard and Valve banned over twelve million users  who “exhibited signs of gross childishness”, such as “talking about how great Boondock Saints is” and “abbreviating words shorter than five letters.”

In the shakeup, an estimated sixty percent of gamers were unable to play games they owned. They took to the internet to vent their frustration, downing Twitter, Facebook, and Kotaku within hours.

Something had to change. And that’s why the good men and women of the Entertainment Software Rating Board are up late tonight.

As the board debates into the wee hours of the morning, a group of a hundred or so concerned parents gather outside the front gates of the ‘Standards House’ and hold a candlelight vigil for the countless immature men and women who were adversely affected by God of War 2.

They sing a haunting version of “Candle in the Wind” for some reason.

“I say we raise the age to fifty-five. If you aren’t mature enough to understand that this shit is fantasy by then, I don’t know what to tell you,” Carl Brook, the most senior member of the board, tells his peers. His proposal is met with silent shakes of the head, a long sip of hot coffee.

“How about adding Immature between Teen and Mature?” asks Felicia Platts-Worthington, a new member and real radical thinker. No one likes that idea either. Adding new levels to an already complex system would only confuse people more than they already are.

Brook stands up. “I’m telling you, we should make everyone who wants to buy an M-Rated game take a maturity test!”

“How do you suggest we test that?” someone asks.

“We have them watch Jeff Dunham. If they laugh, we know they’re not ready.”

A few nod in agreement. It’s not a bad idea, but it sounds like a lot of work. And they would run the risk of creating more Jeff Dunham fans.

“I got it,” Platts-Worthington says. She walks to a large board, where the labels are all listed from E to AO. She grabs a White-Out pen and draws two crude apostrophe marks around the word Mature.

She turns and faces the group. They study the alteration, fingers to chins; their gears spinning. The apostrophes puts “maturity” in a whole new context. It’s a wink and a nudge.

“It’s ironic. Get it?”

One by one, the board rises and gives their savior a roaring round of applause. They can go home now, to their families, and sleep peacefully in their beds. They need the rest, because tomorrow there are games to rate. Children to protect.

Outside, the crowd finishes their song and listens to the hooting and hollering coming from the fifth floor of the Standard’s Building, where a disaster has been narrowly avoided, and smile hopeful smiles. They toss their candles in the street and arrange for carpools back to suburbia.

Within a week, the label has been changed, the inconsistency rectified. And a pair of apostrophes is all it took.