there’s a new video game in town. it seems like everyone i know has gotten guitar hero III – my neighbors, coworkers, colleagues. everyone is talking about it and the competitiveness is getting bad – and i’m not talking about the kids. the other day a conversation i was having about it with a friend quickly deteriorated into this:

me: oh, i love GH III. i got it for the kids but i’ve been playing it too.

b: me too.

me: level one is WAY too easy. i skipped to level two and i’ve already beat it!

b: oh yeah, well, i skipped level two and i’m on level THREE cos i didn’t want my orange button to feel neglected!

me: no way!

b: way!

seriously, the popularity of this game has gone beyond the usual target audience for video games and even adults are playing it. and i think the explanation is simple. who didn’t want to be in a band when they were younger? even during my dorky marching band days, i would dream of being joan jett or lita ford, rocking on stage, which was a lot sexier than honking on a clarinet.

so, i picked up an old guitar and learned how to play a few chords but never got much further than “cum bah ya” on the six string. but now, with GH, i have the ability to make with the rock on the guitar-shaped controller. every time the kids turn the game on they exclaim, “mommy! you got us some new songs!”

this game is awesome. there’s no PROFANITY and no hidden SEX scenes, and no one is SHOOTING anyone,  and it is just plain FUN. so i was completely floored recently when i heard someone dissing it. at a restaurant the other night, we were seated next to a large table, headed up by some blowhard who felt entitled to loudly express his opinions to everyone at his table and to anyone in earshot. in addition to letting everyone around him know that he was an attorney (which will get you killed in some parts of texas), he loudly proclaimed that GH was a terrible game and that it was giving kids the false impression that they were really learning how to play the guitar. all the members of his party bobbed their heads up and down and murmured their agreements. my kids just looked at me.

dude…it’s a GAME. and you probably bought it, but you suck at it. admit it, you wanted to rock when you were young but you were probably in the latin club instead. you obviously were never in a band (or in BAND for that matter) because nobody in their right mind thinks this is REAL guitar playing. even slash got hooked on this game while touring, because it helped him unwind after an evening of thrashing. was he offended? no. did he get incensed because he thought it was infringing on his turf? no. it was just a game and he liked it, and kept playing and playing until he beat the damn thing (level two only, not expert – i feel in good company) and then he decided to endorse the effer because he thought it was so great. so there. geez. go back to practicing something you might know something about and shut the eff up. if it’s good enough for slash, it’s good enough for me.

so anyway, i am trying to work my way through level three (i hate the orange button) and have even read that there’s a duet challenge dubbed the “joan and lita award” but i haven’t found it so far.

i can’t wait. i’ll have to find another mom in the neighborhood to jam with me.

i have had to institute a new rule at the household this week. and this new rule is: peeing without opening your eyes is not allowed.

why do we need this rule? i’m not entirely sure, as i was not actually there to witness what directly preceded the incident. however, the only rational explanation i can come up with for my son to have completely pissed the floor AND the wall while directly standing in front of the toilet was that he was trying to use the force.

my interrogation yielded few clues:

me: now what….exactly… were you doing?
him: uhhhh, i don’t know.
me: did you slip and fall or something?
him: uhhhh, no.
me: were you holding on to it?!
him: uhhhh, yes.
me: have you been drinking?
him:  uhhh…..wha?

this is a 7-year-old boy who has been potty trained since he was 2. who knew this rule was necessary? certainly not me. as a girl, the rules of peeing are pretty much unwritten, and provided your ass has already made (and keeps) contact with the toilet seat, any manner of free-styling (hands-free, eyes closed, whatever) is completely acceptable.

act two:

so about 30 minutes later i hear a blood-curdling scream coming from my bedroom. i raced into the room only to come face to face with nothing. slowly i scanned the room…and my gaze stopped at the top of the 6-foot-tall headboard, where a little face and ten tiny fingers clung between the massive wooden structure and the wall. “help mommy!” the little face pleaded.

after three strong tugs i was able to pull him free and after he was safe, he cried, “i don’t want to die mommy!”

anyway, not to belabor the obvious because i’m sure you know where this is going, but we have had to instigate rule #2: no one is allowed to run across the headboard of mommy’s bed or else they might fall in the crack and die.

star wars analogies aside, there were a few lessons learned last night. first, imaginative play is all well and good until you have to clean up your own errant pee. and second, climbing the headboard of mommy’s bed can be every bit as dangerous as navigating the central core of the death star to shut down the tractor beam, especially for the tiniest jedi knight.

i work with idiots.

now, i know what you are thinking. most of us suspect that we are working with idiots but usually this is just a suspicion based on limited interaction with little in the way of any substantial proof. 

so it’s pretty awesome when some good solid evidence just falls into your lap. the other day i got this email:

From: Security-Houston-Reception
Subject: 911 Calls

The police department are getting numerous 911 calls from XXX, please be careful when dialing international calls. If you need assistance please contact me if you need help completing a call. Instead of hanging up on the 911 dispatcher, please be courteous and let him or her know you made a mistake otherwise they will continue to respond to the 911 calls.

Thanks,

Security Receptionist, XXX Corporation

ok, so first – apparently i’m working with software engineers who can write code in their sleep, but they can’t figure out how to use a freaking telephone.

and second – what kind of person calls 911 and then hangs up when someone answers, “911, can i help you?”

i will tell you what kind of person calls 911 and then hangs up. a four year old, that’s who. how do i know this? i know this because my neighbor’s four year old daughter called 911. not once, but twice. and then just breathed heavily into the phone and listened to the people on the other end try to figure out what was wrong. then she hung up. and about 10 minutes later the fire trucks arrived. the general problem here is that they did not really need any fire trucks to come out and the parents had to explain to the nice firefighters that it was all just a misunderstanding.

my children however, have been completely educated in the finer points of when and how to call 911. like when my son knocked his cars movie lamp off his nightstand and the shade fell off, and the bare bulb burned all day long, through the carpet and the padding and was in the process of charring the wood sub-flooring when we finally discovered it due to the smell of burning plastic emanating from his bedroom.

my children were running through the house yelling, “dial 911!!! dial 911, mommy!” and then they proceeded to scream directions to our house in the background while i was talking on the phone because they just wanted to help. i finally had to tell them to shut up because they were confusing the dispatcher.

but THAT, people, is how to teach your kids to call 911.

apparently no one ever taught these idiots.

my sister, sessie, called me the other day. her name is not really sessie because that would be silly. but my son couldn’t say leslie when he was little, so “sessie” was born. my son also couldn’t say ice cream and confounded us for about two weeks while he would stand in front of the refrigerator wailing “suppeee!” we were completely at a loss until one day it all clicked.  i was taking the ice cream out of the freezer when he came barreling over to me.

“oh,” i said relieved. “is THIS what you want?” everything finally becoming clear.

“yes!” he said smiling. “suppeee.”

“ok,” i replied. “suppeee.”

“no, mommy! not suppeee, SUPPEEE!”

when mommy says it, it’s not the same.

anyway, so sessie calls and she and my mom are having dinner and telling stories and sessie tells my mom a story she has never heard. so they decided to call me.

apparently, i had come home from school and told sessie that i had an assignment to teach someone a poem. unable to find a willing guinea pig participant, i decided to enlist sessie to help me. sessie was no more interested in learning a poem than the man in the moon, so i did what any big sister (or brother) would do. i sat on her until she memorized “the fog” by carl sandburg. now being that sessie and my mom were drinking margaritas, and the fact that i have no recollection of this incident whatsoever, i was certainly skeptical, although, it does sound like something i would have done, and she was able to recite it perfectly over the phone:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

so anyway, apparently, i bullied my sister into getting some culture and 30 years later she still remembers this poem. so i say, no harm, no foul. at least there was a lesson learned, and that’s what childhood is all about, right? sort of like when my other sister dr. laura kicked sessie in the neck. sessie decided to teach her a lesson and pulled some sort of michael jackson thriller dance move like her neck was broken and made a bunch of gurgling noises. dr. laura ran hysterically through the house screaming, “i’ve killed her!! i’ve killed her!!!” dr. laura didn’t mess with sessie for a long time after that.

i think i’ll call mom and tell her that story.