May 23rd, 2013
The Family That Crushes Together
I probably shouldn’t admit this to the Internet, but our family has a new addiction. To a game. A game I’ve tried really hard for the last few months to avoid because I just knew this would happen.
You see, when I was in 7th grade my parents rewarded my brother and I with a Nintendo system after we moved towns and had patiently endured weeks of packing and unpacking and now, in retrospect, I suspect to ease their own parental guilt about uprooting their family (even though we wanted to be uprooted and we loved our new place). The Nintendo system was just as amazing as I had always known it would be.
But I couldn’t. Stop. Playing. Tetris.
I would fall asleep seeing line patterns emerge from behind my closed eyelids.
And I started to notice that I wasn’t the only one with this problem. I remember one night my dad climbing the basement stairs late into the evening, emerging from his tetris-induced stupor to finally head to bed. And then there’s my mom. She still has a classic, screenless, old-school gameboy hanging around the house to get her Tertris fix. That was, by far, the best birthday (or Christmas, I can’t remember) present my brother and I ever got her.
So Candy Crush? I tried to avoid it.
But, this weekend, those stupid candies emerged on the screen of my Mother-in-Law’s iPad and Nora flipped them left and right up and down and I watched from the side of the couch.
And then it was all over.
Soon I was playing that stupid game on my iPad and my phone. One told me I had to wait 30 minutes for more lives? I just played on the other one.
And when we got home from school? Nora got out the iPad she uses and she played. And so, of course, I had to play right next to her.
Yesterday I had one of those out of body parenting moments when you see how things really look.
Miles grabbed my phone. He somehow found Candy Crush, or “andy ursh” as he calls it. He tapped those candies until they jiggled and moved on the screen. Every time he moved one he screamed at the top of his lungs, “I DID IT!” And Nora would look over, from her screen to his, unbelieving.
Until she looked and (sorry to lose all of you non-candy crush players here – if I haven’t lost you already) she saw that Miles had a striped candy.
And then the scene went something like this:
Nora: “MOM! HE HAS A STRIPED CANDY!”
Miles: “STIPE ANDY!”
Nora: “Miles, how’d you do that? How’d you get a striped candy?”
Miles: “STIPE ANDY!”
Nora: “Mom. Really. He has a stripe candy.”
Me: ” I see that. He must have gotten four in a row.”
Miles: ” ONE TWO THREE FOUR!”
Nora: “I only have one more move left.”
Miles: “I DID IT!”
Nora: “Good job.”
Miles: “Andy ursh. I DID IT!”
Nora: “Do you want me to show you how it works, buddy?”
Miles: “I Did IT!”
Nora: “No you didn’t. Look here’s a blue one to move.”
Miles: “Miles do it.”
Nora: “Fine.”
Me: “Let’s quit Candy Crush.”
So we quit.
Or at least I quit until the kids went to bed. And then I only played on one device (small steps, right?)
And we didn’t play after school today.
I thought maybe our family had beaten this game addiction.
But then tonight, after I came out from putting Miles to bed? I found Ken playing.
The family that crushes together…
















