Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: "Video games were invented by the devil"

I hear a few respectful echoes of Erma Bombeck in the first half of this column.

Link to December 27 Orange County Register "Mom Blog".

Excerpt: We have the only house in our neighborhood with no video games. My son has explained to me many times how this makes us freakish aliens from space.

I truly believe that video games were created by Satan to turn otherwise normal children into his drooling, glassy-eyed stooges. After my son plays them at his friends’ houses, he comes home irritable and testy for the rest of the day.

Even though his skin is normally mocha-colored, after a day spent in a darkened room with a controller in his hand, he comes home with a sickly pallor.

This is a huge dilemma for me, because I always had this fantasy that my house would be the one that all the kids congregated at after school. I would be the “fun mom,” the one who made popsicles, the one in the TV commercial with all the kids crowded around the kitchen counter, demanding more of those little pizza nuggets.

Unfortunately, since we have neither video games nor a swimming pool, this does not happen.