That’s it, I’ve had it with you.  You won’t be part of this family for the rest of the night.”  That’s what my husband said last night.  You’re wondering how he could be so cruel, so against all of the proper parenting books, right?  How could he exclude a member of our family?  I’m not sweating it.  He was talking to the Wii when he couldn’t get a decent score in Frisbee golf on Wii Sports Resort.  He’s hooked on that game.  It’s not just Frisbee golf that he’s addicted to either.  It’s ping-pong, it’s wake boarding, it’s swordplay, it’s the whole darn thing.  He loves that game.  It’s not often that my husband asks for things but when Wii Sports Resort came out, he just had to have it and I let him.

 Though we’ve had the thing for years, lately it seems like the Wii has replaced all of the other things that we used to do as a family.  I think I’d like to blame the economy for us not going out anymore.  In my heart I know the truth.  We’re really just distracted by the games of the Wii.  A typical Saturday morning for us goes like this:  I wake up first and put on the coffee.  Once my husband smells fresh brew, he drags himself out of bed, comes into the living room where he flips on the TV.  He, I think, pretends to go through the channels and then, as though he can’t find anything on the jillion channels we have, turns on the Wii as a sort of last resort to his sanity.  When the kids hear the dinging of the controller, they drag themselves out of bed to stand in line to challenge my husband at whatever sport he’s into that day.  The kids think it’s great challenging their dad at basketball.  They never win but are pretty good sports about it.  The have a fair rotation about it too; who ever loses has to rotate out so another kid can get their butt whooped by my husband.

 Every evening as soon as the news goes off, my husband stands up from the couch, stretches a bit and looks at me, “You know what time it is, woman.”  Since I’m one of those obedient wife types, I stand up and go grab a controller.  My husband sets up the game for us.  We always play Frisbee golf.  I used to play this game for real in the real world when I was in high school and college.  A few years ago I found out that there was a Frisbee golf course sort of in our area and I even knew where to get the appropriate disks since my husband and I knocked down a huge display of them one year while getting baseball equipment for my step son.  Since that avalanche of a day, I’d occasionally asked my husband if he wanted to take up the sport as a family.  It’s a good cheap source of fun since the investment is pretty small and the course was free to play on.  He always declined.  He’s gotten to the expert level on the Wii but still is unsure if he wants to play Frisbee golf in real life.

 We’re a close-knit family and we don’t reserve family game night to just one night a week, but it seems that Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit are gathering dust in the closet.  Why should we sit around and roll dice when we can be up and moving and grooving together with the Wii?  The sports games aren’t the only games that take our attention away from the real world.  We’ve had Guitar Hero for a while too.  We used to have challenges to see who could get the best score on a particular song.  It didn’t matter what level it got played on, the only rule was everyone had to agree on the song.  Not to toot my own horn, or click my own guitar, but I always smoked everyone on that game.  Recently we acquired the Guitar Hero World Tour set with the guitar, microphone and drum set.  Whenever that game is set up people have to arm-wrestle me to play lead guitar.  I’m bigger and stronger so I always win.  If the kids have friends over, even the friends know by now to let me play one set so I can get Guitar Hero out of my system and they can play in peace.  I could be making a soufflé in the kitchen (not that I actually make soufflés) and if I hear the introduction music to Guitar Hero, I drop everything.  We’re like a virtual Partridge family.  It’s me on lead, my daughter on bass, my stepdaughter on drums and my stepson on vocals until I’ve had my fill then the microphone gets dropped and the kids rotate instruments.

 I’ve even looked to the Wii to stay in shape with the Wii Fit.  I can’t say that I’ve become any more toned or have lost any weight but I can hula-hoop like nobody’s business.  I can catch hula-hoops over my head while swiveling a bunch around my virtual hips.  It’s all a pretty good work out but a better waste of time.  I tried doing yoga with the Wii Fit but found that I have no balance and that the little games are lots more fun.  I don’t care that I’m a full grown woman, I’m entitled to a little game play too.

 I also have to say that the Wii has really saved me time of printing out family pictures and putting them in photo albums.  Everyone in my family has a Wii and we’ve (Wii’ve?) all hooked our Wiis together and exchanged Miis.  I have my brother and his fiancé prancing around in the Mii parade.  My future sister-in-law’s godchild is even toddling around in there.  My mom wanders around aimlessly.  My dad, it seems, has made himself into some stud muffin that he thinks he is and made himself way too thin.  Turning on the TV is like having a little virtual family reunion. 

 I can’t say that I think video games are a waste of time.  The Wii gets my family moving.  It gets them to share and keeps fights at a minimum.  If they need to duke it out about something we’ve actually have put them in the Wii boxing ring before to help get their aggressions out.  It worked that one time.