Defeated by Draco

A couple of weeks ago my kids pooled their money to buy the 4-game Harry Potter collection. It's always a little hard for me to take the first few weeks of a new computer game. The obsessive "need" to be on the computer, the way their attention (all three of them) is entirely upon the computer screen no matter which one is actually playing, the nagging feeling that I'm probably allowing them to do irrevocable damage to their eyes or, worse yet, their brains... but I've had enough experience parenting by now to know that this too, shall pass. Their attention will eventually turn to other things.

In the end, I don't imagine this is any worse than Kaman (age 4) only wanting to check out dinosaur books at the library or Evie (age 9) insisting that she can only read the Nancy Drew books IN ORDER even though, as far as I can tell, there isn't anything truly serial about the stories.

Kaman has recently recruited me to "help" him through the parts of the game he finds difficult. This involves any task that makes him anxious, basically casting spells on pesky gnomes and getting through mazes that involve toxic slugs or fire-shooting beetles. I stepped up with reluctance the first day (after at least three days of finding ways to avoid it). Today, however, I will admit to feeling some eagerness when I saw him walk, sleepy-eyed from the bedroom.

"Shall we do our Harry Potter time first thing?" I asked. I can't decide if he was speechless from surprise or just not quite awake yet. Yesterday, we had gotten stuck at the portion of the game where we have to chase Draco Malfoy to get Neville's Remembrall back. I'm just not that good at flying a broomstick.

This morning we hopped on our broom first thing. Kaman controls the speed and presses the "knock Draco off his broom" button every time we get near... which is not often enough, believe me. My job is to fly the broom without crashing into the various rocks, ledges, trees, buildings, bushes, walls, etc. Like I said, I'm not a very good broom flyer. This morning, after numerous attempts, Kaman started suggesting that we recruit Evie to do this part. At first was I reluctant.

"We can do this," I kept saying. "We just need to practice. We just need to keep trying and we'll master it soon."

Kaman has mastered his skeptical look.

After Harry dropped from exhaustion (and all the bludgers Draco kept throwing that I somehow still couldn't avoid) for the 15th... or maybe the 50th time, I lost track --Kaman said, "Mom, can we PLEASE just skip this part and go on to the next game?"

It was hard. But I conceeded. My wrist was aching from controlling the arrow keys, my head was pounding, and it was then that I realized about two hours had passed. Yes, it was definately time to admit defeat.

But now I know... there may be one person in this house whose obsessive attention to computer games rivals that of my kids...