Each generation is destined to rise up, challenge, and ultimately prevail over the generation that gave it life, nurtured it, and offered it the world as its inheritance. Each generation finds a new way of challenging the old. It has happened or will happen to many men of my generation in a uniquely humiliating fashion.
Men of my age went to school during the heady beginnings of the digital age. Sure, I took high school keyboarding on an IBM electric typewriter, but a new computer lab was just next door. How can I ever forget the moment when my dad hooked up Pong on a spare TV in the bonus room? When I got home from school I spent much of my time on my Intellivision, my friend's Atari, or, later, a Commodore-64. I took a computer to college. As an adult, I continued playing games, but not as often nor as obsessively as before since the demands of adult living rightfully took precedence over leveling up my Diablo character or building the perfect Sim City.
With delight I introduced the joys and mysteries of gaming to my eldest boy as soon as he was able to hold a PS1 controller. This process was gratifying and ego-building as I, the master, instructed my apprentice in the many ways of defeating a slippery AI or a quick-fingered human opponent.
Two weeks ago my son invited me to play a head t0 head arena battle of Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the PS2. I walked into the room and picked up a controller, wondering, in the interest of avoiding tears, how many time I would have to let him get me before I destroyed him. Thirty seconds later, with the smell of burning flesh and twisted metal rising from my virtual Hot Wheel and my mind still trying to catch up to how in the world he got me, my son informed me that he smoked me like a cheap cigar (had he really learned that from me?). And then came the dance. The victory dance.
Two arena battles later brought no better results. Indeed, after feeling the tell-tale vibration in my controller and seeing my Hot Wheel burst into flame for the fifteenth time, victory was becoming routine for my son. I congratulated him, told him that I was impressed with him, and left the room.
He hasn't said anything to me since then, but I think he knows how big of a moment he just had. Sure, I have let him win past contests, but those victories had always been tempered with the drubbings I gave him before and after his wins. On this day, he had tasted only victory and I, only defeat.
I apologize that I must cut this miscellany short at one item as the kids are in bed and I need to play a few rounds of Hot Wheels Beat That! to figure out how he got me.
Peace
..._
28 July 2008
21 July 2008
Monday Miscellany: Made in China
I took the seven year old boy and the five year old girl camping last month. On the way to the campground we listened loudly to a children's CD by They Might Be Giants. One of the songs, titled "Where Do They Make Balloons?" runs through a catalog of origins for famous products/items and asks:
Marmalade's from Scotland
Rugs from Pakistan
Mexico has jumping beans
And cars are from Japan
Clowns are from the circus
Barking comes from dogs
Eggs come from a chicken
And log cabins come from logs
But where, where do they make balloons? (where)
My son looked over at his sister and said, "I think they are probably made in a factory in China."
My father, the incarnation of preparation and planning, taught me through his example to check your camping equipment before taking it camping. After last year's camping trip left our tent as a worthless pile of broken fiberglass and sodden canvas, he gave us his old one. Two days before we left, I carefully took out the tent and assembled it in the back yard to make sure that I could assembly it by myself and to seal the seams with seam sealer. The next day, I took it down, bagged it, and put it in my trunk, safe in the knowledge that the tent was in good shape, easily assembled, and relatively waterproof.
Once at the camp site, we began the process of setting up the tent only to find that the two fiberglass support members, without which the tent is merely an elaborate, zippered tarp, were still in the backyard, a hundred miles away. At this point a series of errors in judgement on my part resulted in an excursion to North Carolina, a drive down every road in Blairsville, Georgia, and the three of us sleeping in my Corolla.
The next morning my son vomited. We were home by noon.
Because no one signed up to take summer school for history, I have been watching the entire run of Arrested Development at Hulu and trying to keep the kids from killing each other. I have been more successful at the former than the latter.
Today, my five-year-old daughter lost another tooth. Tomorrow we register her for kindergarten. I don't know what to say about that.
Peace
..._
Marmalade's from Scotland
Rugs from Pakistan
Mexico has jumping beans
And cars are from Japan
Clowns are from the circus
Barking comes from dogs
Eggs come from a chicken
And log cabins come from logs
But where, where do they make balloons? (where)
My son looked over at his sister and said, "I think they are probably made in a factory in China."
My father, the incarnation of preparation and planning, taught me through his example to check your camping equipment before taking it camping. After last year's camping trip left our tent as a worthless pile of broken fiberglass and sodden canvas, he gave us his old one. Two days before we left, I carefully took out the tent and assembled it in the back yard to make sure that I could assembly it by myself and to seal the seams with seam sealer. The next day, I took it down, bagged it, and put it in my trunk, safe in the knowledge that the tent was in good shape, easily assembled, and relatively waterproof.
Once at the camp site, we began the process of setting up the tent only to find that the two fiberglass support members, without which the tent is merely an elaborate, zippered tarp, were still in the backyard, a hundred miles away. At this point a series of errors in judgement on my part resulted in an excursion to North Carolina, a drive down every road in Blairsville, Georgia, and the three of us sleeping in my Corolla.
The next morning my son vomited. We were home by noon.
Because no one signed up to take summer school for history, I have been watching the entire run of Arrested Development at Hulu and trying to keep the kids from killing each other. I have been more successful at the former than the latter.
Today, my five-year-old daughter lost another tooth. Tomorrow we register her for kindergarten. I don't know what to say about that.
Peace
..._
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