It is so embarrassing to be a 30-something Mom to 4 kids and be so utterly consumed with a…..eek…..video game! I’m embarrassed.I should have known when I first decided to start looking for Guitar Hero 3 for the Nintendo Wii that it was the makings of an obsession. Just hunting down the game, itself, was its own obsession. I signed up to all these text messaging and emailing lists to let me know where and when a GH3 game for Wii was available for sale because it was sold out EVERYWHERE these last few months before Christmas. I repeatedly missed scooping one up by seconds.

Then one day I had to spend several hours at the mall taking my boys to a science class (what? you don’t have science class at the mall where you live?!). While waiting for Teegan to get out of class, Dalton and I wandered into Gamestop where I tried to covertly glance around for the coveted game. Suddenly, as if Fate itself was calling my name (oh the dramatics!), the UPS guy wheeled on in his boxes for the day. As if I were an eagle peering into a field for a tiny mouse, I spotted that Red Octane box and got, well, a little too excited for a 30 year old mother of 4. I knew I’d have to fess up to Dalton and let him in on the plan.

Unfortunately, the Gamestop dude not only would not tell me if any of those boxes contained GH for Wii (as opposed to the other platforms Red Octane manufactures the game for) but he would not even give a timeline for unpacking the boxes! When I stalked him for hours he told me it was his only holiday pleasure, to torture parents like me. WhatEVER, punk.

Hours and hours later, after Teegan had left the mall but while Dalton was in his class, I got The Text saying that Red Octane had the game available on their website for purchase. I called Tony and told him to put the order through. SCORE! Screw You punk kid at Gamestop!

When Dalton got out of his class, he thought I was still hunting down the game and I didn’t want him to know I scored one, still out for the elusive surprise. So we made one more stop in to Gamestop, just to cover my tracks and make it look like I really did make all possible efforts. I took the gamble that the game would still not be there.

And I lost.

So in the course of an hour I ended up with two of the elusive game and one spoiled surprise. Bah. Leave it to me to be so obsessed with landing a hard-to-find item that I end up with two in the same day, by accident. I offered to sell one to my boys’ best friends’ family but they were all “Oh no, our boys have NO interest in THAT game”. I offered again a few weeks later. “Seriously, no”. Mmmhmmm.

So anyway I didn’t THINK I would be too excited about the game itself but I knew my boys wanted it and would be happy, ruined surprise or not. After I recovered from the holidays, I picked up the guitar just to humor my boys and lets say I haven’t put it down. Lets say my wrists are atrophied in guitar-playing position. Lets say I dream in colored notes flying at me at 100mph. Let’s say, maybe, that I can never listen to the radio the same way again because every song becomes a “great guitar song”. Oh man.

Hence you might think I’m alone in my weird compulsion to attach myself to the guitar, robbing my poor innocent children of an opportunity to play their game, let me assure you I am not alone.

Sure enough, shortly after Christmas the boys’ best friends went out and got themselves Guitar Hero too! At least they used their own money and their parents didn’t have to deal with the whole “surprise” issue I dealt with. And it was all fun and games until my best friend D~ , mother of said boys, picked up that guitar. That was a week ago - I haven’t heard from her since until today when she sent me an email: “I beat the Medium Level today! Watch out”.  A paraphrase, more or less She, too, is hooked on the Electronic Ecstasy I like to call GHWii.

And it isn’t just me and D~, a certain blogging buddy of mine spent all kinds of time battling my family just the other day. You see, geography is no distance since you can battle virtually across the world! And then I convinced another good friend from Michigan to go scoop one up a few days ago. There is this whole band of Mothers out there rockin’ out to Guitar Hero! I’m so sad - I keep trying to challenge all my boys’ friends. I think they want to crawl in a whole and die! I think they want their game back. I think…..their just jealous!

I am living for the day, this month, when they release just the guitars so we I can buy one and play multi-player head-to-head battles-of-the-death. It is going to CHANGE the way I parent, I’m telling you! I’m going to challenge my boys and whoever loses has to make dinner, do my laundry, paint my walls, wash my car and massage my atrophied hands!!!!!!! Oh does that assume that it won’t be ME who loses? Oops, am I that transparent? Well, we’ll have stakes and I’m sure they will be fair. And at least then the boys will get to play, right?

AND! I can battle Tony. I can think of all kinds of stakes there! Oh fun times, fun times. So if my typing is terrible or I disappear it is due to severe persistent deformity of the wrist, hand and fingers from prolonged overexposure to Devil Went Down to Georgia. And if you happen to have Guitar Hero for Wii and want to battle, drop me a line. I’ll kick your ass but I’ll do it gently

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Things I Love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.