Tales of a Relived Youth

Well, I spent this past week getting up an hour early and racing around to get Savannah off to her cheerleading camp. The rather enjoyable side effect of this was that once Savannah was at school, I had nearly 40 full minutes of morning with nothing to do. (Ok, there was plenty to do, but I chose to have some fun with my spare time.)

While Myles was stumbling down the stairs to get himself ready for school, I busted out the Guitar Hero game. Amazingly, I had it completely to myself each time I did this. I guess early morning bleariness doesn't lend itself well to schooling your mother on the Wii. And, it brought back memories of hurrying downstairs every morning as a kid to get first shot at the Nintendo. There is nothing like a little early morning video gaming to get you going. So, I was rocking out all week to Guitar Hero.

"Hey Myles," I yelled on Friday. "I'm totally jamming out here."

"I don't think so," he told me. "I can hear all of those missed notes."

Damn. He can still tell that I need more practice. (But this is only due to the fact that I had promoted myself up to the medium difficulty since I felt I had graduated from easy.) I was hoping that Joan Jett might be looking for a band mate, and thanks to Guitar Hero, I was ready for her.

So, I played on all morning, and learned that my right hand that is used for the strumming action on that guitar would cramp up after a while and I had to develop new ways to hold either my hand or the guitar to ease that pain that my wimpy hand muscles were experiencing.

"Wuss," Myles taunted.

I am no wuss. So, I played through the pain in a truly non-wuss fashion.

After nearly a week of this Guitar Hero-ing, my hand was still wimping out after about 30 minutes of playing. It wasn't toughening up at all. Maybe I am a wuss.

Saturday morning I woke up with my right hand aching and feeling as though it were riddled with arthritis. The simplest movement of my hand would nearly send me to my knees. It took me nearly half of the day to realize that this newly crippled hand was caused by my Guitar Hero mornings. This condition is akin to the "Nintendo Thumb" that I used to suffer from as a child after spending an entire day trying desperately to rescue Princess Peach. Oh that princess nearly cost me my thumbs.

In the same way that the Nintendo has evolved into the Wii, I think the "Nintendo Thumb" has evolved into the "Wii Arthritis". And I'm afraid that my jamming days are over. At least for a while.

I did make myself feel better today with a little Super Mario action. I played my old Nintendo on the same console television that I played on as a kid. Surprisingly, I still remember many of the secret tricks to that game. I also was reminded of the frustrations of not being able to save your progress in that game. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!! Tomorrow my thumbs will probably hurt. Advil and I are becoming better friends these days.