Michigan Winters Suck (AKA other ways of entertaining ourselves)

As usual, winter in Lower Michigan sucks. It is bitter cold for a few weeks, then warm for a week. This means that the snow doesn’t stick around long enough to enjoy. I love skiing-both downhill and cross country-but can’t find the time to get out and do it in the few days we actually have snow on the ground. Even in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula they don’t seem to get the snow to stick around much anymore.

I don’t have the time to drive to the Upper Peninsula to go skiing for a day, and if I had the time, who has the money for the gas anymore? So, I have been forced to find a new way to entertain myself during the cold months. Yesterday I bought a Xbox 360.

That’s right, I spent a lot of hard-earned money on a silly video game system. Video games are a part of our culture, and I grew up playing the classic consoles like Commodore, Intellivision, Coleco-Vision and the popular Atari 2600. These games were a part of my childhood, a nice little slice of distraction.

A couple years ago, a good friend of mine asked me (while we played a Nintendo GameCube) if I thought we would ever stop playing video games, now that we were starting to enter our 30’s and becoming grown-ups. I simply stated that I didn’t ever plan on quitting. I am not harming anyone with my mild gaming habit. I only play after the kids go to bed so they don’t even really think about the possibility of playing. Now that the oldest has played a 360 at a relatives house, she will likely see mine and make the connection, so I suppose I will have to get a kids game. I will not have my first grader playing adult rated games like the second graders on my block who play Halo all of the time.

So there it is; I am a 30 year old adult male with a steady job and a wife and 3+ kids, a mortgage, car payments, and the whole lot. Yet I still like to play video games. I am still a kid inside and see no reason to change anytime soon. I am sure my wife feels otherwise.