I REMEMBER...Nintendo and the Broken Window

....when my three sons were small and we were living in a small apartment in mid-town Sacramento. This is before I met Lise and we were saved from fraternity house Hell. I never had a soft spot for video games and thought they were a great distraction, a waste of time, as well as way too expensive. There were four of us in a small two bedroom apartment, and we weren't the best housekeepers.

I often would rant about them leaving their belongings lying around and especially was upset with things on the floor getting stepped on. I was in fine form one evening when I went into their room and stepped on Nintendo game controllers in the middle of the room. I picked them up and raged about them not cleaning up, not listening to me about leaving breakables on the floor, and just about any unresolved issue any parent has with pre-teen boys.

To accent my inspired rant, I was swinging the controllers around my head, perhaps as a visual aid about my threat to throw them in the trash, when they slipped out of my hands and smashed right through the bedroom window. The boys were attentive when I was just yelling, but they were outright frozen when the glass shattered. Nobody moved. It was a moment frozen in time.

The absurdity was even too much for me. I started to laugh, but the boys still wouldn't move...they probably thought I had snapped and gone insane. It was an embarrassing and expensive way to make a point.

Now it is just a good story.