Entertain Me

Last week we got the internet in our apartment -- yay! We've been contemplating what we've learned during three weeks without outside entertainment (no TV, movies, or internet). I know it's the cool thing to say that we learned to reconnect through deep conversation, we learned how beautiful it is to take a walk through the park in fall, or we learned to appreciate a good book again, but here's what I really learned -- I like TV and movies and internet. Yep, I'm afraid so. The thing is, we already knew we liked good conversation, and without a car, walking is as much a way of transportation as it is a leisure activity, and I've been a bookworm since I was five. So yes, we miss our TV and movies, but we are very glad to have the internet back so we can communicate with all our friends and family again.

Oh, and I learned one other thing. I learned that the male of the species has an apparently infinite capacity to take his game up a notch when it becomes clear that a girl might beat him at said game. This, I believe, is particularly true if the girl in question is his wife. Allow me to give an example. During our three weeks without our normal forms of entertainment, we took to playing various games on the computer. One that became a favorite was pin ball. I had never really played pin ball before, so Nathan was beating me quite handily every night. However, one night I got lucky and got a score of over 4 million. Yeah, wow. Nathan had already informed me that he had never broken the 3 million barrier, so, as you might imagine, I was a little trepidatious about how he would respond to my incredible game. He was, of course, very happy for me.

However, the next morning he suggested, with a gleam in his eye, that we have a casual game of pin ball. I, as the winner and still champion, graciously accepted. He then proceeded to play a game of pin ball which lasted approximately 48 minutes as he collected over 5 million points. My stint as champion had lasted exactly 13 hours. I'm claiming partial rights to the 5 million points since without my 4 million to spur him on, I think he'd still be stuck in the 2 million range.