Fifteen years into this marriage and Wii has validated what I’ve come to suspect. We are not fit. But at I’m fitter than my husband by some 13 years.
Our fifteenth wedding anniversary was today. The traditional gift for fifteen years of marriage is crystal. But let’s be real, who has time to pull out the good crystal these days? And with the economy like it is, what would you drink from it anyway, some Deer Park water? Wine from a box?
The modern day gift for the fifteenth anniversary is a watch. I love watches. But truth be told, I have quite a few and neither one of us really needs another one. I browsed for some fancy watches on the internet thinking I could get one for cheap for my husband from Overstock’s website, but it seems my definition of cheap, and theirs, well… let’s just say the difference was something like the Greed on Wall Street and people being tossed from their homes on Main Street. In other words, I didn’t have the money.
This summer we spent a week in Seattle for a family reunion. Some of the cousins had a Wii and the three of us, my husband, son, and I, had a blast playing with it. That says a lot coming from me, because I don’t like video games. It’s not a moral or philosophical dislike, it’s just that well, I more or less suck at playing video games. So for years I had sworn we’d never own a Play Station, or an Xbox, or God forbid, one of those handheld games that kids can’t seem to go anywhere without these days.
But here we are. It’s 2008 and we have an XBox which my mother-in-law bought my husband for Christmas one year. It’s mostly kept and played with in the basement where I don’t have to look at it. And then there’s the Game Cube, which, surprisingly enough was gift given to my son from my parents and brother AT MY SUGGESTION because I wouldn’t let Snags play the Xbox, and they had a GameCube at the place he spends time after school, but the older kids hogged it, and Snags was sad about that, and I thought this would an acceptable solution even though it went against my no video games mindset. And lastly, there are the two Nintendo DS systems. Because as Santa pointed out a year or two ago, you can’t just have one, there are games that require two players, and those players each need their own DS. Yes, I bought that one hook, line, and sinker.
But all of those game systems left me with nothing. Okay, I did get Dance Dance Revolution for the Xbox one year for Christmas, but it seems as if the dancing gene is akin to the video game playing gene, and it skipped me.
Then came the trip to Seattle and the playing of Wii bowling. I LOVE THAT GAME. Because, FINALLY, something I am good at!
When we returned from Seattle I casually mentioned to my husband that maybe we should consider buying a Wii, and before I knew it, he went and bought one. We didn’t tell Snags, and we hid it away. It was to be a Christmas present for the three of us.
That, of course, was before Star Wars, The Force Unleashed came out. My husband said he’d like that for his birthday. But his birthday comes more than a month BEFORE Christmas. And since crystal and watches were out of my price range, and I was plum out of other ideas, I figured The Force Unleashed could make a nice anniversary present.
Snags, when I told him about our 15th wedding anniversary, simply looked at me and said “That’s Impressive.” When my husband unwrapped his anniversary gift, Snags said, “Ummm, but Mom? We don’t have a Wii!”
So imagine his surprise and delight when we told him that yes, actually, we did have a Wii, and it was our anniversary present to each other and that he could play with it too. He danced, he sang, he spent the money and gift cards he got from friends and relatives for his birthday on the Wii version of Star Wars, The Complete Saga. Because as he said, “It’s better to play it on a big screen!”
The night my husband set up the Wii, the two of us discovered the part where Wii can assess your fitness by having you punch a punching bag, play some tennis, hit some baseballs, and do some bowling. Our scores weren’t so good. My husband, whose 41st birthday is coming up next month, was given a Wii age of 60. And I… well after a pretty disastrous turn at baseball and tennis, where I feared I’d be scored as dead, was saved by my tremendous bowling skills, and scored a Wii age of 47. It could be worse, I guess.
In truth, I shouldn’t be surprised at this. I’ve heard that as people age, their reflexes aren’t as good. If my husband’s Wii age is really 60, then that might explain how he managed to run over his foot with the lawnmower last summer. It might also explain how he managed to mangle some fingers with his table saw last weekend. The lawnmower incident truly can be explained as an accident, his reflexes you see, weren’t fast enough to stop the lawnmower from rolling over his toes. But this latest incident was totally preventable. My husband, after all, was the one who removed the blade guard from the saw blade so he could cut a small piece of wood and then his fingers. That decision more or less backs up Wii’s assessment. His reflexes aren’t so hot and he’s maybe got a little bit of dementia going on there.
And so to my husband I’d like to say: “Happy Anniversary, you old fart. I’ll see you at the bowling alley!”
Running With Books 