Our oldest son has recently discovered the world of video games…his enthusiasm as he describes how he conquered the various levels of Mario Brothers while at his after school daycare is contagious.

So one day Caroline & I proudly stated to Alex…”you know, we have a video game system called XBOX”  his eyes lit up as he leaned forward to hear more of what we had to say.  Well it didn’t take long for him to get bored with the two games we own.  So last night I decided since he had gotten such a great report from his teacher that I would take him to Blockbuster to pick out a couple of new games.  I walked him to the back of Blockbuster towards the game isle, as I begin scanning for the XBox Section Alex ask me “Daddy are these ALL games?”  I realize at this point I need to explain to him that there are different types of gaming systems – PS2, Wii, XBox 360 and off course XBox.  But as I looked around, I started to get that sinking feeling in my stomach…I couldn’t locate the XBox section.  Could it be!  Is XBox so old school that they don’t even carry the games anymore.

So I make my way to the front of the store to ask the clerk…

1. Can you play XBox 360 games on an XBox…I can’t even describe the look he gave me.

2. Do you have any XBox games…his reply was “I think we have a few…Hey Megan, can you show this “gentleman” where the XBox Games are”.  I look back at Alex and already the excitement is dropping off.  He must be sensing my concern.

So as we turn down and isle the lady points to a section about the size of a shoebox labeled “XBox”  Of course it lies in the middle of the row surrounded by thousands of other games for other systems.  At this point I’m forced to face Alex and say to him “Alex we need to pick a game from this section”.  Remember those lit up eyes I mentioned before…well I just extinguished them.  I did my best to grab a game and say “hey what about this one?” He was a champ and agreed to the three games I picked out…of which none of them were the mainstream games he was familiar with like Mario Bros – but none the less he agreed and we headed home.

I felt like such a putz!  I know preparing kids for disappoint is all a part of growing up, but for some reason this one was hard for me.

In the end the first game we played when we got home was pretty cool and he really enjoy it. We both had a great time figuring out the new game and all was forgotten.

Oh and one final side note.  The Tony Hawk game I picked up for Alex (and ME) turned out to be a PS2 Game ARRRGGGHH!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.