Tuesday, February 21, 2006

WWJD in a game of Twister?

You know what I hate? The sadists over at Mattel and Parker Brothers. Have you ever really looked at the games made for kids? No wonder the youth of today is totally whacked! Actually, many of the games on the shelves these days are the same ones you and I played with ions ago... the ones that made us crazy, too.

Let's begin with Perfection. Talk about an OCD instigator! You've got a timer that sounds like a bomb is about to explode coupled with a shitload of weird shapes and you're trying to jam them in the right spot before that game detonates sending a mushroom cloud of math symbols into the air. I think I once read that they use the game of Perfection on Prisoners of War to make them lose their minds. And let me tell you, it works. I seem to recall my oldest sister playing a lot of Perfection and let's just say that she's not the wellest of women. Unless, of course, it's normal to do things like count how many bites of food you take and to lose sleep over things like a magazine that arrives in the mail with a few bent pages.

Then there's another favorite among the obsessive-compulsive crowd. It's Operation. In the game of Operation, you get a loud 'buzz' and a mild shock anytime your surgical materials touch the pathway into the cardboard body. Yeah, that's what we want the future doctors of America thinking of as they're removing our gall-bladders and bypassing our arteries. Have you ever seen a doctor wince as they begin a surgery? Those are left-over tremors from these poor doctors' Pavlovian experience with this sadistic game! Operation is cruel and unusual punishment for a poor child to have to endure. I mean, come on, you won't put a shock collar on your dog, but you'll ruin a perfectly normal future for your kid just to be in the hip game crowd? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

The last of the games that should be burned in a massive bonfire is Twister. Parents, come on. You haven't figured this one out yet? You ever wonder why this game has been around since the 50s? Especially considering it's got a totally boring premise? Yeah, it's not about touching the left leg to the blue dot and the right hand to the yellow circle. It's about little Johnnie brushing past little Sally's pre-pubescent boobie in the name of "innocent fun." If you haven't discovered it yet, I'm here to tell you that Twister may as well be called Pregnancy in a Box. Because when little boys and girls start locking limbs and getting in strange positions with each other, it's all downhill from there. I'm surprised the conservatives haven't managed to take Twister off the market yet. Perhaps I'll send them a letter.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just want to set the record straight. I'm obsessive, but I don't have an eating disorder. I just have to have an EVEN number of things. It's not just food. I have to push the pump dispenser on my lotion bottle an even number of times, too. I don't have a problem acknowledging my psychological quirks. I just don't want your readership out there to think I've got even more problems than I really do.
Signed,
Oldest sis

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Kerry...you don't have an eating disorder..you're just a freak like the rest of us!

Anonymous said...

I absolutely agree!

When I was growing up, we had "game night" every other Saturday. My mom wants to revive this nauseating "quality time" activity for my niece.

We argued about it for an hour. I told her that games are just tools to get young children brainwashed into Capitalism. For me, it was Life -- where you learn to be a good bourgeois family, Monopoly -- where you learn to acquire property and compete against all other consumers, Risk -- where you try to dominate the world.

When I was around 5, there were some moreorless benign games, like Candyland, pickup sticks, etc.

Anonymous said...

This will tell you how old I am, but I remember really liking playing jacks! It required a little skill and coordination. M

Anonymous said...

This is so funny. All I can think about is the fact that I have played the game "operation" one time in my life. I was about 8. The first time it buzzed, I decided I would never become a doctor, and definately never play that stupid game again.