Savannah Lee

I remember coming downstairs for some family time. The kid was just home from dance and eating a turkey sub. The huz (h/t Tenaya Darlington for that vast improvement on 'hubby') was playing whatever online thing he plays...a couple of days ago I was watching him do that. I watched him watch his little gnome female as she trotted across the snow towards whatever destination awaited her. And trotted. And trotted and trotted and trotted. Pat-pat-pat went her little feet across the snow. Pat-pat-pat. "And," I queried my husband, "you mean to tell me that you will sit here and watch her run for as long as it takes."

"Yep."

"Not just you," I said, "but everyone who plays this game."

"Yep."

"They will watch their characters jog along over hill and over dale."

"Yep."

"And that's somehow not boring enough to make them stop."

"Yep."

"Because right now, I am so bored I feel like my face is melting. And here's the thing."

There's always 'a thing' with me.

"Here's the thing: I have read Proust. I have read Zola. In the original. Huge honking tracts of intense Frenchness. Written by men where, if you had the temerity to go up to them and ask if any of this shit about voir les premieres aubepines and de ma tasse de the was going to 'go anywhere,' they would say 'Not anyplace near you, you ungrateful maggot' and throw you out on your butt."

"Yep."

"And I got through that."

"Yep."

"Yet I am not going to be able to survive another second of watching this damn gnome punch foot-holes in the snow."

"Yep."

"SO HOW DO YOU MANAGE!? HOW DO YOU AND ALL THOSE OTHER THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE MANAGE TO SIT HERE AND WATCH THESE LITTLE THINGS RUN AROUND FOR MINUTES AT A TIME!?"

"Well, if you're playing right, you don't need to do it very often."

"Okay, but when you do. How do you stand it."

"Because it's no effort."

"....That's it? You can do it because it's no effort?"

"Yep."

I nearly killed myself.

So anyhow, the huz was busy watching pixels run back and forth across other pixels, the kid was eating her post-dance takeout dinner, and I decided to join them for some family time.

The first order of business was to shut myself off as completely as possible from the television. (Did you somehow think the television wasn't on? People! Please! We're Americans.)

Now don't get the wrong idea. It's not that I don't like television. It's that I can't just sit there while it's on. I can't watch in a detached way. I either have to commit to it 1000% or wall myself off from it. Very very rarely do I feel like taking the thousand-percent trip, so I always keep a book or magazine handy. Except that this was family time. So instead of reading, which would create a situation where I might as well have stayed upstairs, I...lay down on the couch and put a blanket over my head.

You can imagine what fun it is to live with me.

I resurfaced to find myself quite alone in the still-lit living room. At 3am.

"You didn't even move," the huz told me later, "when I tried to wake you up."