Kirkepiscatoid

Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon/evening over at my friends B. & J. for Christmas dinner, where the high entertainment was commandeering grandchild A.'s new Wii. She was torn between "wanting to play with it with the grownups" vs. "You grownups are playing it too much with each other." It's not an unusual Christmas dilemma for a ten year old. I suddenly heard the voices of my parents and grandparents coming out of my mouth saying, "Now, A., we are all going to have to go to work on Monday and YOU are still going to be off school and can play with it to your heart's content all you want...so CHILL!"

I had to laugh. My mind backtracked to many Christmases in my own childhood where one of the unintended "childhood lessons" was "learning about sharing b/c all the adults are playing with YOUR toys!" That lesson was not always well transmitted in my family. Sometimes it precipitated arguments. It's a strange dynamic. It is that childhood "powerless" problem. I got to thinking about A.'s dilemma. I remember that dilemma. You want the adults to play WITH you and part of the bargain is you have to let them also play with each other. This is hard b/c it's YOUR stuff, and it's your NEW stuff that you want to get acquainted with yourself.

So at a moment neither of us were playing with the Wii, and watching two of the other adults playing, I sat over with A. and said, "Hey, you know what? Look at the great present you are giving everyone. One of these days, you are going to be grown up yourself, and you are going to be off work for Christmas with either YOUR kids, or someone else's kids, or grandkids, and it will be the ONE day you can feel like a kid and play like a kid. When you're not playing, I want you to watch me and your mom and your aunt H. and your uncle A. and your grandparents. If you watch REALLY closely, you will see what they were like when THEY were kids! You only know us as cranky old grownups. A magic part of this day is only KIDS and their toys can bring this out in grownups. What a wonderful gift you have given all of us!"

What is it, about Christmas day, that brings out the mass ability in adults to play with toys that is unlike any other day? It's the one day of the year where we seem to have the license to "let go of being an adult." It seems to usually happen after dinner, when all the "adult" jobs of preparing the meal or shoveling the walks for company or helping in preparation of things is over. The meal is finished, the plates are stacked up, and everyone is full and resting. Part of the rest often becomes playing with the kids and their toys, even commandeering them a little to the kids' dismay!

Is it an innate desire to "do this over till we get it right?"

Yeah, sometimes it is misguided. Sometimes it actually creates tension between adults and kids on this day. But I have a feeling it is rooted in this need for adults to have a tiny window of time that they can really "be" a kid again. The toys have changed, but we adults are continually as "inept" with the new generation of toys, whatever the toys may be. I was laughing at how in some of the Wii games, little A. was MUCH more skilled than we were. I was a junior high kid when Pong, the patriarch of all video games, was in its infancy. But I was skilled where my family's adults were inept. This pattern just keeps on going! But there must be something we are yearning to "get right," and I have to think about what that "something" is.

P.S. Thanks be to God A.'s grandparents got the "Classic Rock" version of "Guitar Hero" on the Wii as well as the "regular" version. The ONLY reason I did not TOTALLY suck at "Guitar Hero" first time out was I was playing it to Alice Cooper's "School's Out" and the tune was much more burned in my brain than little A.'s. She said, "How can you be even that good when you've never played this game?" I just looked at her and said, "Honey, my problem with this game is the hand eye coordination, but this song is burned into my soul! You weren't even a twinkle in your grandparent's eye when this song came out!"