The Crimes of Youth

I'm fully prepared to declare that the best video game of all time may not be the Pac-Man of my youth...  

The game in which my father encouraged me to continue playing...telling me just how great I was.  I was around 3 or 4 years old, amused by the lights and all things shiny (sort of like my grown up husband...or more likely the grown up me...)...I handled that joystick with the prowess of a future fighter pilot dodging Migs.  

The kicker?   The unearthly discovery..

The thing that my father continues to chuckle about to this day....


The thing that has left a traumatic scar, too which I will likely never recover from??

The evil and horrible events that actually occured?

My father allowed me to giggle in my amusement all while I was only playing these games in my MIND...

My father had given me no Benjamin Franklin's, no Andrew Jackson's, no Abraham Lincoln's not even a single lowly George Washington...


In fact, my father didn't even give me a shiny quarter.  


No quarters.

That has to be some sort of crime.  There should be some sort of law against misleading a young child into thinking they are the all time best at Pac-Man.  The all-time best at a videogame in which quarters or dollar bills are a necessity.  I thought that I surely had set all kinds of world records.  I was giggling and proud of myself.  I remember turning around a big cheesy grin on my face, running back and forth from the video game to the table where my parents downed pizza and beer.  My parents laughing approvingly, I'm sure spreading the story amongst their other "adult" conspiratoral friends, just look, how cute our little girl is?  She is sooo adorable  (Now on that I couldn't agree more).

However, I am long over those scars and now possess not only a Nintendo Wii but also a Sony PS3.  Fortunately, I have bypassed the need for coins of any kind.  The game is mine and I can play it whenever I want.  I may be hanging onto my 20's however I can still take my ball and go home!

I have come to the revelation that Pac-Man has been surpassed by one of the greatest video game creations of all time...

SINGSTAR!!

This is not your mother's karaoke.

This is main stream with the music video pumping in the background.  You can rap to Eminem, you can sing ABBA or Queen or U2.

One of my personal favorites....  

Vanilla Ice and his famous "Ice Ice Baby."

The last time I played this game I was two very loaded margaritas deep with one of my best friends.  


We were rapping to Vanilla Ice..  My friend ended up on speakerphone with her husband "Honey, can you hear us we are rapping?"

I was in tears....and the best part is that my pocket was still fully loaded with shiny quarters and they are all mine, too!