This past Friday night I went over my aunt and uncle’s house to visit with my cousin Mike. He got back from Iraq not too long ago, and he told his parents that he wanted to see the family, so they threw a party. Everybody was there, including my high-school dropout, Cheech-and-Chong-impersonating cousin, her eloped-and-married-a-girl-with-two-kids-and-now-he’s-a-Bible-banger-brother, and the rest of the Jerry Springer bunch.
While I didn’t get to see much of Mike because I was trying not to socialize with everyone else, and because he was being deluged with the questions, “So how was it?” and “So how are you?”, I was playing video games with my Bible-banging cousins’ son in the basement. (He’s not the greatest evangelist in the world. He’s kind of lazy about Jesus.)
Anyway, so we’re playing this game, and my six year old cousin and I are shooting lots of bad guys, blowing up tanks, destroying a few buildings, that sort of thing, when a little girl walks in.
“Hi.”
“Hi. My name’s [Ha ha, you shall never guess my real name. Never!]. What’s your name?”
“Jennifer.”
“Hi, Jennifer. That’s Ethan.”
Ethan, my cousin, didn’t look away from the screen. Meanwhile, Jennifer was peering directly into my eyes. I don’t know why, but for some reason I seem to have that affect on little girls.
“What are you guys playing?”
“I’m not sure what it’s called. We just kind of shoot stuff.”
“Oh.” She looked at her shoes with boredom, and her eyes scanned the room. I thought she was looking for other kids her age.
“How old are you?”
“Six.”
“Oh. Ethan’s six. Maybe you guys could…”
Suddenly she put her tiny little hand on my forearm, and then squeezed it as her eyes widened. I looked to where she was looking, and my gaze fell upon the video game screen. Ethan had just knocked over a building, destroying a tank, and his character in the process.
“…”
“Jennifer?”
“Oh my gosh that was so WICKED! Do it again, that was awesome!”
“What? Blow up the building?”
“Yeah, that was so cool!”
“Uh, okay.”
So Ethan and I ran around for the next few minutes destroying all the buildings on the level. Even though that’s not the point of the game, that’s the effect girls have on boys. Then I had a better idea.
I pried Jennifer’s fingers off of my arm, showed her the controls, and she and Ethan went bonkers blowing up everything on the level, then each other, and then the level would reset and they would do it again.
Still, the thing that kept me chuckling was when I was standing by the basement stairs, and I would her a sweet, tiny, little voice scream, “Shoot him in the face! Blow his head off!” followed by the sound of gunfire, and a unison chirping of “Wicked!”
