One of the ways I prepare my thoughts for what I’m going to write is once the topic is lodged in my brain I look for a quote that fits the feeling I’m feeling. Usually I stay with the quote, sometimes—like the last entry I don’t. I started off with Mr. T’s quote about jibber jabber and ended up with lines from ‘our song.’
Tonight was different. While I am not particularly happy with growing older, I’m not completely bothered by it. I do like the caution that is coming to me as I age, though of course I’m not old enough that I always heed that inner warning bell—though it is much louder now. I find the understanding that comes with experience to be beneficial, if not yet soothing. I have a current situation of someone I am around that does things only when they are beneficial to their reputation and spends much of the rest of the time in even darker Machiavellian pursuits. By this point I’ve seen this sort of thing quite a few times, so while I find myself irritated by it, I do not find myself caught by surprise by things that happen to me when I’m in this person’s way. I suspect as time goes on I won’t even be irritated by it because situations like that will hold much less tension because of experience.
I don’t like the slowing of my body or its susceptibility to injury. I don’t like the ever growing more infinitesimal chance of another child. I don’t like the loss of friends or family to illness and death. I don’t like the narrowing of possibility. It’s safe to say I’m never going to be President or an Astronaut now.
Where does all this come from? I had one of those ‘oh god I’m old’ moments that can probably only happen when you have kids in your life.
My daughter loves this game I downloaded to my phone for her—Pocket Legends. It’s like a cuter World of Warcraft for your iPhone. She’s been playing it for awhile and had topped out of the free version. Leveled up to 16 and was running out of things to do. So she brought me $5 from her catbank and wanted me to buy (ingame) platinum so she could do more. I agreed, it’s her money, and she’s consistent about liking/playing the game.
She spent a lot of platinum really fast and I barked at her about it. I thought she’d just bought new heads and clothes. Turns out she’d been planning what she was going to get for awhile and got two new adventures, some armor, a new character and a new head and some outfits. All in all, well spent.
She’s played wizard 101 and WoW(with supervision, hush) and been tricked into giving things away and squandering her gold . She’s much better now, but I hadn’t realized so I thought she’d blown it. J investigated and found her purchases to be quite well thought out.
So I apologized. I realized I didn’t have all the info I needed, but also I found a bias. For as much time as I spend with computers and various technology (and only in the shower or sleeping am I unplugged anymore—though I am stepping back on the weekends now that it’s warmer) I don’t get spending real money on in game currency. It seems dumb to me that people spend say the price of a meal for clothes in second life or the equivalent of socks for special zombies in zombie farm. I even have a bit of problem (thought it hasn’t always stopped me) not buying the actual CDs and instead buying cd downloads. I appreciate the tangible and have not fully embraced the virtual in some ways.
And after figuring that out, J reminded me that our parents used to think that the $5 or more we “wasted†on a Friday night at the arcade playing Tempest or Galaga or Ms. Pacman—well that’s exactly how I feel about spending real dollars for virtual possessions ingame. Ouch.
Gonna have to get over that…at least somewhat.
At least I can remember loving the arcade with a fervor –that kid is still in me somewhere, close enough that I can apologize to my own kidlet for letting my own bias get the best of me, which is something you can only do with experience, which only happens when you’ve ridden the earth a few more times than a few around the sun.
Now Playing: Emily Wells: Dr. Hubris and his Vile of Turpentine from Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks
(this was the perfect song for this entry too, happened by accident)
