I won! I won!

Really, I won!  Well, so what if it is Guitar Hero.   Does the fact that it is a video game negate the fact that I am amazing?  (And humble too, yeah yeah.)

I think not.

I've always loved video games -- from the day I played my first game of pong.  That tiny odd-shaped white blob that trailed white as it had such a poor refresh rate, back and forth across the screen, BOING, BOING, BOING.  I loved the sound.  I loved anything that was a game on a screen.  Ms. Pac Man, Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, Starship Galactica ... all of those games and I have spent countless numbers of hours together.  (And countless other games, but whose counting.)  My lethal combination of competitiveness and addictiveness (the two deadly ness's) have always resulted in a need to conquer whatever game I am currently obsessed with.

And today I reached 100 percent on the song I was playing.  And I ran through the house with my arms over my head screaming "I did it, I did it!"  As you can well imagine, Peter was VERY proud of me, and the things he muttered under his breath I am sure were heartfelt congratulations.  Maddie said that while she's never gotten 100 percent, she's also graduated from Easy.  Yeah, well, I don't care.  One hundred percent is one hundred percent.

I have fond memories of Hallie and I playing Mario Brothers, and then I would get cheats from people at work and then we'd snuggle up on the couch and I'd surprise her with my newfound knowledge (when she was five!)  And then she started getting her own cheats from friends and wouldn't share!  Oh, the fun we had.  "Too bad mom, if you can't remember, then that's your problem."   She was a little competitive wench herself.   The first game she was better at than me was Donkey Kong.  I really had to make peace with that.

Maddie and Charlie are better at me at most (more recent) games because I haven't really played them in years.  They have each other, there are two controllers, I am odd man out.  But Maddie has been home with her bad knee and we've been bonding big time.  First we watched Gilmore Girls, the complete seventh season.  But that is a whole other post in itself.  And then I became obsessed with Guitar Hero, and she and I have been rocking baby.

Peter has made several comments along the lines of "is this what you do all day," and "do you sit at the computer all the time," but I don't really answer him.  What I do with my life is better left a mystery to him (where it doesn't involve him!)  The fact that his idea of relaxation is destruction and construction and mine is reaching obtuse goals is just the way it is.

ROCK ON BABY!