Video Game Addictions

Video Games are an addictive pastime, and there are several generations of 'kids' now addicted to them. The fast-moving digital media can be unhealthy, too, because overexposure to it can reprogram the brain for rapid-fire, rather than cognitive thinking. See this article on it...

I for one have many that I've enjoyed over the years, on many platforms including the Commodore 64, the Atari 2600, the PC, the Playstation 1 and 2, the GameBoy Advance, and Nintendo DS. I'm even currently working through level 150 of ToyBlast on my iPhone. (A very addictive little game).

In our loving madhouse, we sign off from Electronics on Sunday, from morning until after evening services, to focus on God and unplug for a bit. Maybe do some healthy brain activity like read a book. Like, maybe, the Bible! Or work puzzles.

But little Johnny doesn't quite get it. Could be the ADHD, perhaps he wasn't paying attention. Since we confiscate his Nintendo 3DS for the day, he's leveraged the Color printer and a roll of Scotch Tape to create one we WON'T confiscate.

Believe it or not, what you are seeing here is the OUTSIDE cover of a Three-Dimensional, realistic, PAPER Nintendo 3DS. I'll open it up for you so you can see the inside...

Please forgive the rotated nature of the pictures, my iPhone created the pictures in landscape, and I'm having trouble rotating them back. Notice how John has a PacMan game going on his PaperCraft Nintendo 3DS. He's also got all the controller buttons, and along the sides of the unit, he has all the connectors to plug in power (a big no-no during no electronics) or an audio cable.

I gotta say, his PaperCraft Nintendo 3DS is so realistic, it's fooled several people in the family, and even visitors, and I've even managed to fool John himself with this expertly taped together game system.

It's certainly 'street legal' during our electronics fasts, but the only game that will probably play on it, other than PacMan, would be Paper Mario.

Life In Hyperspace, revisited...

Life In Hyperspace is a book I've been meaning to write on these misadventures with my family, and I'm finally getting traction on it.

Some of the chapters in the book will reflect stories you can find on the pages of this blog, and some of them you have never heard. Unless you lived them, with my family.

I've shared some of these laughs with coworkers and extended family, and they've all said I should put this in a book. Or a Movie. Or a reality TV show.

Well, I couldn't possibly let TV cameras into the home. Besides the fact that we have the usual ADD clutter issues we don't want to share on TV, I couldn't cover the liability to their cameras, laptops and sanity as my kids bounce off the walls around them.

But putting it in a book is safe enough.

Just for fun, I'll put the lead-in here to whet some appetites:


Only in Our House…
“What do you mean, is Clear Coat poisonous?”
My wife paused. “You left the spray can out after you were done with the Grand Prix car.”
I took a deep breath. “And?”
“And, well, John spraypainted the cat.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “He what?”
“You mentioned this morning that his coat looked dull. He was just trying to help.”
“The can was almost empty. Brush his coat to pull off as much as you can.” I hung up and shook my head, staring ahead at the evening rush hour traffic.
Spraypainting the cat? What was he thinking?

After about five minutes, the phone rang again.
“Hey honey. Did you get the cat cleaned off?”
“How far out are you?” She sounded troubled.
“About five minutes, I think. Why?”
“Want to meet us at the hospital? Rachel almost cut her finger off in the van door.”
I swallowed. “What?”
Rachel’s voice cut in. “I was looking for the DVD remote like you asked me.”
“In the van?”
Justin called out from the background. “It’s pretty bad, Dad. We’ve stopped the bleeding, but you can see bone!”
My head swam. “Justin, you know how I am about blood. I’m driving on the expressway.”
Rebecca took a deep breath. “I’m taking her to the E.R. Want to meet us there?”
“I’ll be home in three.”

Late Night Snack??

This morning, when I came down to fix coffee, There was an empty jar of Peter Pan peanut butter (creamy) on the counter, and this mess in front of it...

My first thought was, which of my four kids got up in the middle of the night, to make themselves a sandwich? And why a fork? a Spoon? A bowl??

So, I hollered up at my oldest dear son, asking him what was up with the PB sandwich late at night?

He really had no clue what it was about, and blamed the 4yo.

Hmmm. I couldn't see the 4yo doing this, and the finger smears through the middle of the bowl didn't look like toddler fingers...

Then I went into the bathroom.

It appears that the peanut-butter culprit also wanted some hand lotion. But why in the world? And with peanut butter all over their hands, too! What in the world?

So, then I looked next to the Lubriderm, and there was peanut butter smeared on the gargantuan Sams bottle of hand sanitizer. Looked like whoever the culprit was, they desperately wanted 'clean hands and a pure heart'.


Next to the hand sanitizer, it appeared the water faucet had been turned on by Peter Pan also, and there was also peanut butter under the tap, dripping down into the sink. Yuch. Peter was desperate to get those hands clean.


So, I started asking questions of the kids. Finally, R, the 11yo daughter, admitted it was her. Apparently, she'd gotten some of this stuff called 'Zing' gum. Here's the packet of it, pulled out of the trash.

She decided that if one stick of gum was yummy, then all 15 sticks of gum would be even more yummy. So, she crammed them all in her mouth, and sat up reading a 'Charlie Bone' novel until 2am, when she started to fall asleep in her gum and in her book too.

She knew it wasn't good to go to sleep with gum in your mouth (A baseball-sized wad is such a choking hazard, you know...) so she pulled it out of her mouth. But gum that's been chewed all day and all night tends to gain in stickiness, or at least, that's some of the 'Zing' in 'Zing'. It turned into a goo on the level of taffy, with an adhesive coefficient of tackiness equal to that of Gorilla Glue.

First it stuck to one hand, then the other, as she attempted to get it off the other hand. One finger after another was imprisoned in the wad of goo, until she had a cats cradle between her hands, like a pink spiderweb.

Eventually she managed to get downstairs, open a jar of peanutbutter, and sacrifice all its contents to remove the glue from her hands, her arms, and her face.

The peanut butter worked, but removing slimy peanutbutter from your body at 2am apparently requires liberal application of Lubriderm, Hand Sanitizer, and Cold Water.

Lucky for the rest of us, chemical reactions involving lanolin, alcohol, and peanut oil do not in fact cause fires or spontaneous explosions.

Or so their packages seem to imply. But I think I'm going to write the manufacturers of 'Zing' and 'Peter Pan', requesting that they please add to their verbage on the package, 'Keep out of reach of Children'.

On a side note, R's late-night foray into cleaning up this sticky situation should have turned into a teaching opportunity, because, just as King David found out, trying to cover up your sin, and deal with it yourself, leaves a much bigger mess than getting help and forgiveness.

R should think about this as she attempts to clean the downstairs bathroom before homeschool starts...