My son is extremely disappointed that his game, Halo Reach, didn’t arrive in the mail today, as scheduled. We special ordered the game from Costco.com for his birthday, which was last week on the first day of school (the poor kid). In spite of playing video games way too often (is this the case with most 11 year old boys?) he wanted this game like kids in the early 80's wanted Rubic's cubes... Smurfs... Cabbage Patch dolls, oh you know, he HAD TO GET IT. According to my son, this stupendous, miraculous game had its world wide release TODAY, September 14, 2010. (Is he SURE it’s today? I think it must be tomorrow.) But when he got home from dischool, he checked the mailbox. Nothing. Checked the front porch, where the UPS man usually leaves packages. Nothing. There were no Post-It-like notes stuck to the front screen door, ala, Fed Ex. Man. This being the case, I ask you, what is a newly-turned-11-year-old boy to do? He’s been pacing the floor since he got home from school. He did his homework in a microsecond, anticipating the delivery of the videogame package, knowing I wouldn’t let him open it until the homework was done. All for nothing. (Who cares about education? Not my son!) His life was a total disappointment, he informed me. (Yeah, who cares about the bike he got this summer, and all the great things we did in the past two months?) I joked with him, "Yeah, it's the end of the world.” “It IS,” he tells me. He starts a negative rant about Costco, telling me he’ll never buy another thing there again (… which is no big loss for Costco, since it’s really ME that does the shopping there, and I have no intention of boycotting.) As a matter of fact, he’ll never even set FOOT in Costco again. I imagine him standing just outside the wide open doorway of our local Costco, arms folded in front of his chest, and chin up in the air, as a few employees try to coax him inside to no avail. I chuckle. “My life is over.” He informs me. We are sitting in the parking lot at his karate dojo when he tells me this. He’s flopping around the car, venting his disappointment and frustration. "Ok, It’s time for karate," I tell him. He gives me a joking glare and states dramatically, “I’m not going in there until my video game is delivered!” but when I glare back at him he knows I’m serious and he heads inside.
In my boring, adult mind, I keep thinking, I can't believe he's making such a big deal out of this, but you know, tomorrow, when the game does arrive, he's going to be the happiest little man in the world, and I'll be marveling (and appreciating) the pure simplicity of boys.
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