Somewhere, at some point, based on the advice of somebody who shall remain anonymous, I convinced myself it would be a good idea to rent Mario Brothers (or some version thereof) and play it with T. Wholesome family fun! Everybody join in! Bonding! Joy!
This was a no good, very bad idea.
Well, the idea was a good one. T is a bit of a control freak - no idea whatsoever where he gets that *ahem* - and board games usually end in a bit of a disaster as T takes the rules VERY seriously and S likes to organize everything by color or size or S's secret organizational playbook - especially if we are in the middle of a game.
What I didn't expect is that I would turn into a Mario Monster.
I've never really been a video game person. I'm not very good at them, and after the initial fascination wears off...meh. But T and I sat down to play a nice, family oriented two player game. Since he's five, I didn't know if he'd like it or dislike it, whether he'd catch on or quickly get bored.
What I didn't expect is that T would be perfectly fine with shoving me to my mushroom and toad facilitated death and then laugh with glee as he tells me, "You've gotta do better than that, Mom." Nor did I expect that I - me, Ms. I don't care about video games - would get bitterly competitive and take all the good power ups for myself as I silently laughed with glee.
It was an awfully ugly reflection I had to face in the mirror.
So T and I sat down and had a chat. He'd stop killing me on purpose and laughing about it, and I would realize that it's just a game and not take it so seriously (otherwise known as removing the great big stick voluntarily from my own ass).
R didn't hear any of the rational game conversation, and has spent the last couple days thinking he needed to mediate and probably that I can't be trusted to play Mario anything with our children. Poor R. Which for the first day or two was pretty accurate. So when I suggested that we buy the game, the look on his face was priceless. Horror, fear, dread, morbid fascination, reluctance, and outright resignation that if we didn't buy it together, I'd buy it anyway. I plead the fifth on that. :chuckling:
So we bought the game and will set limits f0r T and for me. S even played tonight and did well. R, I can tell, thinks this game is pointless because he always plays save the world/kill the enemy in bloody and violent ways games (when the kids aren't around).
And tonight? T and I actually helped each other through the levels and we didn't even raise our voices in mock confrontation.
Who says an old dog can't learn new tricks?!?
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