One of The Many Signs I Am Old
A natural part of aging is being surpassed by the younger generation. I understand and accept this. While serving with the young men I realized that most of them were faster on a basketball court than I was, could eat more ice cream than me, and had the capacity to stay up far later. I was ok with all of this because they were teenagers and I was old.
Unfortunately, this trend has now extended to my own children. Allow me to explain:
This weekend, one of my girls wanted to play Webkinz online and I agreed. She choose a game in which you control a polar bear sledding down a mountain. Easy game - push a button to make the character jump over obstacles. The more obstacles you clear the more points you earn. You can earn extra points by increasing the difficulty at higher speeds and hitting some ramps. Really simple. I have been known to enjoy a video game from time to time, so I "helped" her get started. After figuring out the timing I was scoring ~750 points per game. I was totally rocking the sledding polar bear! At about 750 points I'd crash into a tree every time and figured it must be the end of the game.
At this point I got distracted with the baby for a few minutes and left the room. You can imagine my surprise when I returned to find that my daughter had scored 1,200ish points. I took my turn and crashed into the usual tree. On her next turn she put up around 2,000 points. Me: crash into tree. Her: over my tree and a couple more for good measure. I knew where the tree was and figured out a strategy to clear it. Still crashed. We finally moved on to a new game when she posted over 3,000 points. I never did jump over that stupid tree. Must be because I'm old.
Did I mention that Caroline was the daughter in my anecdote? Yeah, she's three.
Unfortunately, this trend has now extended to my own children. Allow me to explain:
This weekend, one of my girls wanted to play Webkinz online and I agreed. She choose a game in which you control a polar bear sledding down a mountain. Easy game - push a button to make the character jump over obstacles. The more obstacles you clear the more points you earn. You can earn extra points by increasing the difficulty at higher speeds and hitting some ramps. Really simple. I have been known to enjoy a video game from time to time, so I "helped" her get started. After figuring out the timing I was scoring ~750 points per game. I was totally rocking the sledding polar bear! At about 750 points I'd crash into a tree every time and figured it must be the end of the game.
At this point I got distracted with the baby for a few minutes and left the room. You can imagine my surprise when I returned to find that my daughter had scored 1,200ish points. I took my turn and crashed into the usual tree. On her next turn she put up around 2,000 points. Me: crash into tree. Her: over my tree and a couple more for good measure. I knew where the tree was and figured out a strategy to clear it. Still crashed. We finally moved on to a new game when she posted over 3,000 points. I never did jump over that stupid tree. Must be because I'm old.
Did I mention that Caroline was the daughter in my anecdote? Yeah, she's three.
2 Comments:
rightfully so deb.
i'm waiting for someone to point out that the issue is me sucking rather than being old....
Well, as someone once super tactfully told me, "It doesn't take a lot of skill to play those games."
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