A Few Good Memes

I left for work yesterday morning with Alyssa sitting at the computer, surrounded by 6 or 7 friends, playing the Sims 2. Alyssa is a Sims addict. If you haven’t seen this game, it’s where you create a virtual neighborhood with virtual houses & cars, virtual families, virtual jobs & money, virtual gym memberships, and with expansion packs, virtual pets, virtual frat houses, and more. It’s a pretty fun distraction. (surprisingly, for all its shiney-ness, I haven’t actually played it myself. I’m too busy playing with REAL houses, cars, pets).

Not long before Anna died, our babysitter brought the Sims over for us to borrow after Alyssa had seen it at her place. She played it a few times and liked it. I’m relatively strict about TV/computer/Gameboy usage. My kids each get 5 tokens (hours) a week to use on what Ian just calls “electric”. When we came home from South Carolina after Anna died, Alyssa started playing more Sims. No problem with that by me, she was using tokens. I walked by the computer one day while she was playing and I was floored by what I saw: there was a young woman with curly red hair sitting on the lawn in front of the house, playing games with a little brown-haired girl. Alyssa was using this game to recreate the mama-lovins she was so acutely missing in her life right then. You can name your Sims, and, of course, they were Anna and Alyssa. Play therapy through computer games. I was so proud of her. I told her that while she was playing Sims, her tokens counted for double.

I’m Soooo thankful for my kids.