Sup, everybody. So “Dead Space” is out today, as those of you in the gaming world might be aware, and I’d like to draw your attention to the zen-like calm with which I do not go withdraw sixty bucks from an ATM, purchase that beautiful game, and tell my wife the money was for groceries. See? See how I’m not buying it? I’m a good husband.
The truth is, I’m actually not buying it out of fear. There are few things my beautiful wife cares so little about as video games, and she has made this plain to me many times, so you might think I could orchestrate this little project in secret. Nope. I’m afraid her calloused attitude towards my Xbox, like the withered tree that Christ found so disappointing, yields not the fresh fruits of neglect. Let me put it to you another way: my wife knows what every video game I own looks like while being played. She doesn’t set out to know this, but she does, because she sees them all the time and has been trained as a photographer, so images stick with her.
Picture the scene, dear reader: I have procured a new game without informing or receiving consent from the woman who, by definition, has a right to know about these things. I sit on the couch, rapidly tapping buttons, and my wife appears behind me, traveling aimlessly through the living room in the middle of some task. She looks at the screen, cocks her head, and stops in her tracks.
“Is this new?”
It’s not fair, dear reader! It’s not right! She hates video games, how can she tell the difference between the space marines in “Halo” and the space marines in “Mass Effect”?! I have male friends who can’t, how come she can?! It should all be the same to her! The frustrating truth of my life is that Corelyn’s apathy towards my delicious distractions from responsibility is not quite as profound as she would like me to believe. Put another way: she may not like them, but she’s not ignoring them either.
Looking back on it now, I realize that she may keep a running tally of games I’m interested in acquiring, so she can red flag them if they should somehow mysteriously end up on our television screen. Let me give you an example: a while back, I ranted endlessly to her about the virtues of the new “LEGO Batman” game, which is exactly what it sounds like, and the entire time I was quite sure I was receiving courtesy nods and absolutely bare-minimum “wow”s. Naturally, I presumed this information was chucklingly discarded from her data bank. But then, weeks later (weeks!), I downloaded a free demo of the game from Xbox Live, and the moment she saw it, the question came flying:
“Did you buy this?”
Notice the subtle difference. She asks “is this new?” if she doesn’t recognize the game, because she has no idea what the title is and doesn’t care, but she’s still wondering if our collective pocketbook just got sixty bucks lighter. “Did you buy this,” on the other hand, infers she already knows what I’m playing. It’s like asking if the other shoe has finally dropped. She remembered one obscure rant from a month ago.
In all honesty, even if I did buy a game, not tell her, and she caught me, I would probably receive a mild scolding at best, but you have to understand that my brain functions like an episode of “Seinfeld.” It’s not the punishment I fear, it’s the fact that somehow, events are transpiring perfectly to thwart my little designs. That is, I think, what being neurotic is all about: the nagging sense that all of reality will re-align itself just to put you down. While I’m not neurotic, I think I’m just barely neurotic enough to wonder how I can possibly surmount the unstoppable obstacle that is my wife’s ability to make note of things that she doesn’t care about. I want to somehow run a black-ops operation where games are procured, then hidden in plain sight. I can’t bring myself to, like, hide the game or play it when she goes to bed. That’s too drastic, it would force me to admit I’m hiding anything at all. That’s the other thing about being neurotic: you’re not quite going to admit what you’re doing.
There must be a way.
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