So the other night I was just hanging out and daydreaming in my office when I heard my husband yell out, “DAMN PANDA HEADS!!”
And so of course I ran out into the living room to see what was going on, because…um, What?!
When I got out there I saw my husband standing on the balance board for the Wii Fit, doing one of the training programs that involves you standing in the middle of a soccer field, attempting to head butt all the soccer balls that various people are throwing at your face.
Now, I am the first to admit that I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER about athletics. So much so, in fact, that during my high school graduation ceremony (I went to a private school so my graduating class was somewhere between 60 and 70 people), the headmaster would call out things like, “And now, everybody who has ever participated in the drama department, please stand.” I guess he was trying to emphasize how well-rounded and prepared for college we were, along with showing just how much our education was worth all of the tuition money that our parents had forked over for so many years.
So eventually he got to, “And now, all the people who have ever participated in any of our sports programs, please stand up,” and I am telling you the God’s honest truth here-I was THE ONLY PERSON IN MY ENTIRE GRADE who remained seated. A fact of which I am still inordinately proud.
But back to the Wii. I thought that this was kind of an odd “training” program for my husband to be practicing, but given that I am so athletically illiterate I just assumed that it was a totally normal soccer exercise to stand in one place while people attempted to decapitate you with the soccer ball, and that if I questioned anything, then I would just be showing my ignorance. So I was just hanging out on the couch, kind of getting into the rhythm of what my husband was doing, until I saw something that made me do a double take.
“Hey, did that guy just throw his shoe at you?” I asked.
“Yeah,” my husband replied. “Sometimes they do that.”
Now funnily enough, that part of the game I could totally relate to-the whole, throwing around an inanimate object out of rage or frustration thing. My husband has actually forbidden me from ever playing golf for this very reason, based on a series of texts he received from me last spring announcing things like, “I HATE OUR STUPID FAX MACHINE!! Would it be better to smash it with the pickax or run it over with the car?”
But then, then I saw something else on our TV screen-the kind of something that makes me ask, “Um, did I accidentally just ingest a giant plate of psychedelic mushrooms without noticing it?
“What is that?” I asked my husband, sort of afraid of the answer.
“Oh,” he replied casually, “that’s a panda head. Sometimes they throw those too.”
Oh, right, panda heads. Of course. I guess I’ve just been out of touch for so long that I’m not up on the latest technique of Dodging Severed Animal Limbs As A Way To Unleash Your “Best You”.
And they say that video games have no educational value. Pshaw.
Wait until you see him try to do the hulu hoop with a hoop that’s not really there. Try not to fall off the couch laughing.
As soon as I saw the title of your post, I knew what you were talking about, because just last week I saw this particular bit of the Wii Fit in action. My brother has one, and my kids love to go over to his house to play with it (he gets to be the Cool Uncle, while I get to play the Stern Mom and say things like “five more minutes, kids!” and “No, you are not allowed to play Wii Boxing, because even though you’re not really hitting anyone it’s still about violence!”).
My eight-year-old was getting into the heading-the-soccer-ball thing, but her five-year-old brother would laugh like a maniac every time he saw a panda head (“there’s one! There’s one! Here it comes here it comes aaaaah!”), which made her laugh too, which was a distraction, and so it became not so much a game of balance and coordination as a game of looking for crazy things to laugh at.
Which is just fine by me.
@MDQ-I can’t make any promises.
@Wendy-yes, I’m a big fan of crazy and laughter myself.