i blame mario

Jem has recently been asking to watch me play video games. He doesn’t play himself because he hasn’t quite mastered the art of using a controller, mostly because I rarely let him try. I’m not ready to lose my boy to video games just yet. But every once in a while I will play an old game and let him watch. I will admit that there are probably much better ways to spend time with him but I have fond memories of playing video games with my brother growing up so I let the nostalgia take over.

One of the games he likes to watch is Super Mario Brothers 3. I grew up playing it but haven’t revisited it in years. And I’ve discovered something. I’m a little rusty. I make silly mistakes and I die a lot. And I wish I could say that with age comes patience and the ability to laugh at those mistakes. But I can’t. What I can and did say was, “I don’t want to play this anymore. I’m not any good at it.” It just came out, and as I was saying it the grown-up part of my brain was saying, “No! You can’t say that to your 4 year old! Think of what you are teaching him.” But it was too late. The perfectionistic twelve year old in me grabbed control and spewed out her nonsense.

Today, Jem asked if he could watch me play a game. I said yes and he chose a different game while saying, “This one is easy Mommy. You can do an easy one.” Great! My child thinks that I only want to do easy things and that I quit when things get hard. I’m sure it will come out in therapy years from now when he has quit his fourth job in 8 months. Curse you Mario Brothers!

photo by Darkhilt  http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkhilt/6755544671/