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Every Life is a Story
    A place to share my own family stories

Monday, March 12, 2007

Gamer Wife

I am married to a husband who loves video games, and roleplaying games. Consequently, we own and play a lot of a video games and roleplaying games. This is fine with me because I happen to love games too.

I have a problem, however, when it comes to video games. It's called guilt. Most video games that are popular today take hours and hours to play, and have a high learning curve so that I'm not really enjoying the game until I've played for at least an hour. This is time that I do not have to spend all at once during a busy day when there is grocery shopping to get done, or laundry to do. I can certainly spend 5-10 minutes playing solitaire as a quick break, but hours? Forget it.

Then there's the competition factor. I am not a terribly skilled gamer, and my children and husband are. I really don't want to look bad in front of people when I'm playing, and since they love to play, I'm happy to let them. I become a game WATCHER, and not really a game PLAYER.

Last weekend, my husband brought home his company XBOX 360- a game system that we will own just as soon as my husband writes a game for it. There were lots of games, and the family had fun exploring all of them as a fun Friday night activity. The best of the lot, however, was a little game called Viva Pinata. It's basically a game that lets you simulate growing a garden and raising animals, but it was so well done. After a few minutes, I was hooked. I REALLY wanted to play this game. My history as a game watcher, however, kept me from playing. My kids were playing and loving it, and I had things to do- dishes, dinner, chores, all of the normal things. I offered a lot of advice, and watched them play all weekend long.

Sunday night came, and the children went to bed. There was the XBOX- just sitting there with nobody on it for the first time in days. Even THEN, I wouldn't let myself play. The kitchen was messy, the newspaper had to be taken to recycling, I had the grocery list to finish. Finally, FINALLY, I was done. Everything was quiet. I pulled up the rocking chair, and turned on the game. It was as fun as I thought it would be. I vaguely noticed that my husband had come up and laughed at me playing there. I talked to him in brief short sentences, not really wanting the distraction. He even stayed in the living room for awhile while I played. I think I noticed him a few times. Finally, he mentioned something about it being almost midnight. Almost midnight! I checked the clock. It was almost midnight! I had to be up early in the morning! I had too much to do to be working on so little sleep! What was I doing still playing this game!?!

It's still called Guilt.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Bill the Bird

It was a warm spring day the year my oldest child was three, and we decided to walk to church rather than drive. As we were walking, there was a dead bird lying there by the side of the road. My three year old was very sad, and said to her Aunt, who was holding her hand, "Oh no! He's dead! And he was my very best friend!"

"He wasn't your best friend." Her Aunt said.

"Oh yes, he was!" the child insisted.

"He couldn't have been your best friend, you don't even know his name."

Without missing a beat, she tearfully responded, "It was Bill."

They spent a moment in silent contemplation of Bill's lost life, and waved goodbye before continuing to church.

"To be a person
is to have a story to tell."

- Isak Dinesen  

 
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