Kids and their toys

If you're a decent reader of my blog, you should know that I have three sons. Two of them being the oldest at ages five and six. They love their toys, and that's respectable. But they love my toys as well. And by my toys, I mean my bass guitars (yes, plural) and my videogame consoles, in particular the Wii. I don't mind it sometimes; but there are times that when I see them playing I either want to take it away from the both of them because they're misbehaving, or because they can't play the game the way it's intended to be played. The sad thing is that I don't know what irks me more.

So I guess that I'll start with the part of them misbehaving on the Wii. First off they're five and six, they're prone to be in trouble all the friggin' time anyways. Always roughhousing in our home causing more noise than necessary, it can lead to insanity at times. But for the most part they are good boys, and they do listen to instructions (remember that one for later in the post). But there are some things that I just don't understand with them and the operation of the Wii, much less the playing of the titles. First is the dreaded WiiStrap. They sometimes pass the WiiMotes back and forth to each other forgetting to strap that thing on, it's an annoyance and I really don't want a broken TV because of that. It's a pet peeve that I'll probably contest to a future 'WTF PEOPLE?!?' posting *hint* but for now it's just a nuisance that they don't remember at times. Another nuisance is them touching the discs. Like I said, they're 5 and 6, greasy, grimmy, disgusting, slimy, booger infested, dirt-in-nail, and otherwise gross out until you vomit fingerprints all over my games? I don't effin' think so! I take care of my stuff and try to find classic stuff to horde (I swear I was going to go all Bilbo Baggins on this Nintendo PowerPad I saw at Goodwill today, but the wife wouldn't let me, damn). I like to keep my stuff in mint condition if I can, so I don't ever let my kids take out the discs and scratch 'em all to hell and back. Also, they tend to be a sore loser if they're losing on something. I keep telling them "so what!" and let them sort it out in a mature way (as mature as a 5 and 6 year old can be).

The other thing that gets me isn't quite the conduct and etiquette in playing a videogame, it's the execution of playing said videogame. I have a lot of stuff on Virtual Console for my Wii because I like the old school games and that they're a good basic building block for any gamer, even little kids. It's just that with little kids, they tend to do some of the most mind-numbing things that I just gets my blood pressure rising. Take for example, Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES; my kids love this game, but not for what you might think. There's a minigame in it that let the two players play the original Mario Bros. arcade but as a port (transport with an updated look from the original) of course. Well, that's all they play. They don't continue on through the actual game and accomplish anything, it's just the constant playing of the port that makes me wanna yank the controllers off their hands and play the whole damn game myself just to show them what the hell they're missing by playing that stupid effin' port!!! That pisses the crap outta me. But that's not the only game they play (thank goodness for options); they play WiiPlay as well. Here's where the etiquette thing comes back to bite me in the ass. It's a game essentially of minigames, and they're supposed to take turns on which games to play, but that doesn't happen usually. Usually it ends up with the same damn game being played multiple times, and the same kid winning multiple times, that it causes the other one to get pissed off. So I come to the rescue and pwn the winner in his own game. They're both upset, they're either in time-out or in their room sulking, and I'm not stressed out over the arguing of a videogame.

I seriously get irked to hell by both of these instances and I try to reason with those boys. They sometimes get it, but I swear they're both thick in the head. Must have gotten that from their mother.

I'm BootLeG sampler.. and I'm sleepin' on the couch for that remark...