The kids and I play a lot of Mario Super Smash\u00a0on the Wii. It’s a simple game in concept. Each player selects a character, and then they try to beat the snot out of each other. The violence is mitigated by silly graphics and music and a whole lot of randomness.<\/p>\n
We’re pretty evenly matched, with my oldest son having something of an edge.<\/p>\n
This weekend, in a bid to increase the fun of allowance, I decreed that the only children who would be getting their allowances would be those who could beat me one-on-one in Super Smash. The first round of battles went well for me.<\/p>\n
Apparently, having a little money in the game sharpens my reflexes.<\/p>\n
So I eased things up a bit, and over dinner, I suggested a new approach. Each son\u00a0would pick the characters for his brother’s\u00a0matchup.<\/p>\n
“Oh man,” my oldest son. “You’re getting Jiggly Puff!”<\/p>\n
Jiggly Puff is a character that I simply can’t win with. It’s a weird little pink puffball whose special power is putting things to sleep. I’ve never won with Jiggly Puff, not even when I was fighting Jiggly Puff.<\/p>\n
“Are you sure?” I asked. “You may give me Jiggly Puff when I’m fighting him, but what will he give me when I’m fighting you?”<\/p>\n
The boys looked at each other, and their eyes narrowed.\u00a0This\u00a0was a primary opportunity for betrayal.<\/p>\n
“Who goes first?” they asked, almost simultaneously.<\/p>\n
“You can\u00a0do rock-paper-scissors,” I said. “The winner can go first.”<\/p>\n
“So, I could give you Jiggly Puff to play against him,” my oldest son said. “But then he could have you play Spud against me?”<\/p>\n
Spud is a character I created, crazy powerful, and very difficult\u00a0to beat.<\/p>\n
“Yep,” I said. “But if you go first, you could do the same to him. Or you guys could cooperate and both get your allowances.”<\/p>\n
They huddled. They discussed. They considered. They discussed again.<\/p>\n
In the end, they both got their allowances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I suppose doing social experiments on your children is not exactly proper parenting… It sure is fun, though!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-EB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}