Game Crazies

Matt’s still sick. And everyone’s getting tired of it. Especially Matt. He’s decided he has Black Death. He’s been known to break out in singing “Ring Around the Rosies,” which Wikipedia says is not about the plague. But I’m not sure how else you’d explain the nursery rhyme.

However, since Matt has gastrointestinal issues and not an upper respiratory infection, the plague is doubtful. But he points to his rash (which my doctor friends call “viral exanthem”—cool word) as confirmation of his self-diagnosis. He’s been known to moan, “My rash is getting black rings.” Thankfully, he’s too tired to go get a sharpie and start circling them.

Because the rashes are itchy and we’ve tried everything else, I gave him oral Benadryl. I really, really should have known better. Matt doesn’t process medications that same way most people do. He became very hyper. There’s nothing like a hyper 14-year-old who says, “I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored.” Thankfully, Jacob came to the rescue. He got out characters from our games “Aunt Millie’s Millions” (a game where you fight over a deceased woman’s possession—it’s actually very funny because you make up wild stories in order to get the asset and the rest of the players vote on whether your story is good enough) and "Guillotine" (seriously, it’s a game about collecting heads). Okay, I need to insert a caveat here. Those games make us sound like psychopathic crazies. We’re not. At least, not all of us are.

Back to Jacob, he took these characters and made up this long interactive story/game involving all the games’ characters. Jacob has made up a lot of games over the years. My favorite one was "Zombies." It's a competitive/ cooperative game where you’re locked in a house and attacked by zombies, and in typical teenage boy fashion you can slow down the zombies by giving them raw meat, or you can kill them with explosives or flame throwers.

Hmm. Maybe we are a bit demented, but in a good way. I can’t wait to play the new game he’s working on—I see cards lying around the house, but he won’t tell me what the game’s about. Apparently, everyone he knows reads my blog, and he knows I’ll blog about the game. Smart boy.