What does she have against Webkinz?
Spencer was on a rustic out of town trip with his mother (my ex-wife) and some of her friends. They were away from any computer or Internet access.
Recently, he had become enthralled with these stuffed animals called Webkinz. But, he is not interested in the plush toy; he is interested in the website for the virtual care and feeding of the digital version of the ‘pet’ and, of course, the games.
One of the aspects of their marketing program is for the child to login on a daily basis in order to keep the child’s webkinz alive and happy. The child is also eligible for virtual prizes each day they login – the hook to get a million nine year olds onto the website each day.
So, without Internet access, and my son wanting to perform his daily Webkinz chores, I get a call at 10:00 PM. He is frantically telling me to get online and ‘feed’ his Webkinz. This wouldn’t have been a big problem except for the lovely woman sitting on my sofa holding a glass of wine and a suggestive smile.
Get lucky or help my son out of his panicked state. It was a tough choice.
I excused myself for a moment and went to the room where my computer was located. Hopefully, I could have both if this Webkinz thing only take a few minutes.
Well, 45 minutes later I am still on the phone with my son, working on the Webkinz site. Turns out his mother bought him five more Webkinz the previous week. It sure takes awhile to ‘feed’ that many virtual critters. I was almost done, when I turned to see the lovely woman standing in the doorway of the room. However, her facial expression was suggesting something I’m not sure I wanted to do to myself.
“You leave me out in your front room for an hour so you can play children’s video games. What kind of sicko are you?” (Well, she didn’t really say that, but it was implied.)
Before I could respond, she turns and disappears.
“Who was that, Dad,” my son asks me over the phone. I then hear my front door slam.
“Oh, it is just the TV. Okay Buddy, I think we’re all done with taking care of your Webkinz. Good night,” I said.
“ Thanks, Dad.” Spencer replied with a sigh of relief. “Love you. Good night and I can’t wait to see you on Sunday,” he continued in a happy voice.
Who was it that said, ‘I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy’? Well, I’m not sure how it applied in this situation, but for some reason, that’s the quote I thought of as I went to look in Spencer’s empty room. My son hung up the phone just as I was saying, “I can’t wait either.”