child's play

Given the sounds that are drifting up from the family room, I think someone's playing my game. I can pick out "foul ball" and now some muffled crowd noise--was that perhaps a home run? Good luck breaking my record, though, buddy. This activity may as well have been designed expressly for me: a version of baseball in which I don't have to field, get to bat for everyone on my team, and throw the ball by swinging? If I'm not an automatic all-star, I'll be the world's most contented player. And if not for my aching shoulder, a souvenir from this sudden activity, I'd be the queen of Wii monopoly, too, not that my daughter, the game's rightful owner, even knows.

Today, for example, she was out on a break week field trip with her uncle, and I bet she'd laugh right out loud to know that meant batting practice for her mother. When she and her friend got back from their outing they may have been video-gamed out--an afternoon at Dave & Buster's might do that--but I still was amused, and I admit, somehow pleased, that they spent more than an hour this afternoon in front of a dollhouse. A wooden dollhouse, even, that does not plug in or light up or make a sound, the crown jewel of my daughter's fourth Christmas, six years ago.

Long since crowded out of her bedroom by piles of other stuff, the dollhouse sits downstairs on the computer room floor, and for a year I've been thinking about boxing it up. Almost did yesterday, when I thought we were getting a dog. But today when I hear, "I'm hungry," and then "I'm sick," floating up the stairs, I almost shout down, "What's wrong with you? Are you okay? Didn't you just eat?" when I realize they're pretending.

But of course the novelty eventually wore off, and they adjourned upstairs to my daughter's room. Between the two of them they own two cellphones, an iPod, a PSP, the Wii, other game consoles of various descriptions, probably every Webkinz yet manufactured, fourteen thousand dozen Littlest Pets, every Warriors book, every other thing every 10 nearly 11 year old would want--except High School Musical, here by the girls verboten--so you know, they had other things to do. Like play paper dolls! I am not even kidding, couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. The cardboard evidence still covers her carpet.

So to those who fear that a video game in the house is the beginning of the end, I have no fear for my child's brain, no qualms about the state of her imagination. A toy is just a toy, as far as she's concerned, and the best thing to have in the house is a friend. Now the grown-ups, on the other hand, well. That might be a different story. They're not always so well-balanced. But what, I ask you, is a tidy laundry room compared to an out-of-the-park home run?