Other People's Kids

I never planned on wanting to have kids when I was a teenager. I mean I didn't expect to EVER want kids. Even when my son was on the way I still wasn't sure how I felt about it. As it turns out I love kids. Specifically, I love MY kids. Other people's kids...

This past weekend Heather and I went by Game Crazy to try out the one-race demo of the upcoming game "Burnout Revenge". It's the sequel to a racing game that surprisingly captured Heather's interest: Burnout 3. As fun and addictive as Burnout 3 was, Revenge is set to blow it away. My lord was that fun! Barring delays it's only a month away.

I also decided to try out a bargain title called Phantom Dust that they had used and were selling cheap. They had two copies and it is a system linkable game so if I liked it I was going to buy both so my son and I could spend a night or two beating up on each other before school starts and I get to laugh at him.

The clerk set the game up and I skipped through the opening movies and cut scenes in an attempt to get to the action to see how it played. I made it past the opening stuff but still wasn't in the action because it's one of those games where you have to explore a bit to find where you can fight.

So I'm wandering around in the game and I feel a tugging on the controller cord. I look down and there's this little boy no older than five or six pulling on my cord. He was a child that is probably referred to as "precious*" by his mother. I could tell he was a child that was going to have a tough time growing up. I mean actually getting bigger. He had stubby arms, stubby legs and a big head with big eyes that were staring up at me.



"Can I play?" he said when he saw that he had my attention.

"No, sorry," I answered and then returned to figuring out where I needed to go.

*tug*tug* "Why?"

I look back down and say, "Because I'm trying it out to see if I want to buy it."

He gets this screwed up little look on his big melon, stares me in the eye and says, "Liar."

My eyes must have widened and I got out, "Wha...?" before his wee legs carried him off to some other display machine.

I seriously couldn't believe it. When I was a child I would have never called an adult that I didn't know a liar to his face. Strangers could still reasonably get away with hitting children who weren't theirs back then.

I wanted to follow him and say, "Not only am I not lying, demon spawn, if I like it I'm buying both copies so you shall never play it. NEVER! Ahahahahaahahaah!" but that would have been childish. Also I'd just found where I needed to be, so I set about beating my opponent like he was a rude, pre-dwarf, cord puller.

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* Okay, if children are so precious, why can't we sell them? I mean legally. I could have looked down, seen this kid at the end of my cord, said, "Oooh! How precious!", scooped him up, stuffed him in a bag, sold him and then payed off my student loans. "Precious" my ass.

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