Learner Dad: My wife has taken to playing Super Mario Run with the kids before they go to bed

Our six year old spends all his time talking about games he’s playing on the new Nintendo Switch.  Picture: Stock image

ARE the kids really going back to school? I’ve seen the government announcements and read the email from our school, saying it’s everyone back on August 27 . But I can’t get my head around them going in there and meeting up with peers they  haven’t seen since in uniform since March 12 . Kids are very affectionate people, they’ll be all over each other in a minute, kissing, hugging and snotting over each other like it’s Electric Picnic without the Smirnoff Ice.    I know they’ve successfully opened schools in other countries in Europe, but Irish people get very excited when they meet each other after a while, particularly when they’re from Cork. My guess is there will be sniffles in every classroom by the second week of September and we’ll be taking them home again for who knows how long? Sorry if this sounds a bit pessimistic, but I’ve found pessimism to be a very useful tool in coping with life under Covid. Hopefully, I’ll get a pleasant surprise.

Video violence:  Our six year old spends all his time talking about games he’s playing on the new Nintendo Switch. I know I should be worried about this, but it’s a step up from listening to dinosaur facts. ( I’m thinking of applying for the professor of palaeontology job at Stanford University. I’d say get an interview at least, thanks to my little tutor. ) Anyway, this little tutor is after getting a thing for Minecraft on the Nintendo . They say it’s a gentler alternative to the Mario racing games, or shoot-em-up titles, with the added advantage that you can set it to levels like ‘peaceful’ and ‘safe’ as your character roams through a virtual world, building houses and gathering food.  I asked my little guy what was his favourite thing about the game. He said, killing the villagers and taking their food. I said, why do you kill them? He said, because I feel like it. That doesn’t sound peaceful or safe to me. But at that age, I was shooting everything that moved as well, with a stick or a hurley or whatever came to hand. My son is, like me, a sensitive type who wouldn’t hurt a fly in real life, in case the fly hit him back. So I’m going to make a judgement call and say I’m fine with him playing Minecraft. Hopefully, this won’t feature in a documentary 20 years from now called 'He Killed All the Villagers'.

Poor me? The other big game in our house at the moment is Super Mario Run. (There’s a bit of eating and sleeping in our house as well, in case you think we let the kids play video games all day long.) My wife has taken to playing this Super Mario Run with the two kids every evening before they go to bed. We only have three controllers, so there is no room for me. My first thought was this is unfair. My second thought is never go with your first thought. My evenings now are spent in another room, reading, watching a match or something else I choose to do. It’s like I don’t have kids any more. It’s amazing. When all the other parents were advising me to get a games console, this is obviously what they meant. The only downside is my wife is addicted now as well, so I have to be the bad guy who comes in and says game over, time to go to bed. But everyone is a winner with this latest arrangement.

The backward stretch:  My mother starts to notice ‘the stretch’ in the evenings before the end of December every year. This is usually upgraded to ‘a grand stretch’ sometime in mid-February. But now it’s early August, and the stretch has gone into reverse. It’s dark when our kids go to bed, their fingers still twitching from all the Super Mario Run. I pull down the blinds and feel a bit sad that summer is on the turn, although it’s still a few weeks before they go back to school. If they ever go back to school.