The New WiiWii

It's official. We now have a Wii. Truly, I am not a slave to trends or fads. It was not my idea to get one. Afterall, just how much can one boy play on computerized devices? He has a Playstation, a DS, several hand-held games, and now the Wii. We've run out of plugs in the living room. We're going to have to get rid of the lamps and use candles if we get anything else that requires electricity, because of course, we'll only be able to unplug the TV after my husband's dead body grows cold in his coffin.

How did we wind up with a Wii? It was the boy's birthday. His father and I struggled for weeks trying to figure out what to get him considering our limited funds. Let's not forget that last month we shelled out over $600 for a cell phone bill the boy racked up. Don't even get me started on that. I took all his grass cutting money and wrote up an IOU and made him sign it so that he wouldn't get all huffy about giving me every dime he gets to pay off the cell phone bill. I told him he could consider the hours of enjoyment he got from "Girls Gone Mobile" as his birthday present. He was not so pleased about that.

Anyway, back to the Wii. We can thank the absentee mother for the Wii. Having not spoken to or visited the boy since - hmmm ... I think it was Easter, maybe, I can't remember it's been so long - she really had to come up with something special to knock his socks off and try to get him to forget the fact that she never calls, never visits, never has anything to do with him, etc. So she called to say she got him a Wii. My husband, her ex, was pleased to see that she spent some money for a change. Usually it's bags of meaningless and useless stuff from the dollar store or Goodwill. She takes the boy shopping at Goodwill. Are you kidding me? I think Goodwill is a wonderful endeavor and I am so very glad to donate to it. But considering that I am not homeless or without financial means, I think it is just bad manners for someone to be shopping at the Goodwill store just because it is cheap ... like going to a bargain outlet store or something. Let's please leave that stuff at Goodwill for the struggling folks for which it is intended, ok? Don't be taking the boy shopping there for clothing and toys. If you can't afford to get him anything, just don't get anything at all and it will be the perfect match to all the rest of the nothing you do for and with him.

She really angers me. I think I'm angry on behalf of her children. She is someone who just shouldn't have had kids in the first place. Here's how I explain it to the boy ....

"I am sure your mother may be a good person, a good friend, a good daughter, and probably a good employee. But she is not good at being a mother. No one is perfect. You (speaking to the boy) are not a good football player. Does that make you a horrible person? No. It just means that you're not good at doing something. Well, she is not good at being a mother. You can still love her and care about her - she is your mother, afterall, and you should be respectful to her at least - you just have to understand that she is not going to turn into a wonderful mother at any point now or in the future. It's not going to happen. But you can still be her friend and visit with her and talk to her. Try to love her for what she is. Don't punish her for what she can't be."

When I have this conversation with the boy it is all my husband can do not to throw up. Animosity and fury still abound in the tattered remnants of the memories of his marriage to her. As a matter of fact, it is I - the evil stepmother - that defends the deadbeat mother all the time. I scold my husband when he slips up and talks bad about her in front of the boy. I scold the step-daughter and the boy if they say bad things about their mother. I'm always saying, "You can think it all you want, but don't say it! It's rude and disrespectful!" And, when the boy comes to me with tears and anxiety because he knows his own mother doesn't want him so he feels worthless and rejected, I am also the one that has to explain why she never calls, never visits, and never seems to display one moment of interest in her son or his life. It's a blessing and a curse at the same time. Her non-involvement makes it easy for me to provide the boy with a consistent and healthy life. She doesn't interfere. For this I am truly blessed. So I will defend her and try to help the boy, and step-daughter, make sense of and grapple with the fact that their mother is not a mother and never will be.

The other thing the arrival of the Wii did was punctuate the fact that we didn't have enough money to buy the STELLAR present of the birthday. My husband really hated that. We got the boy games and accessories to go with the Wii. That seemed to be fine. We also took him for a shopping spree at his favorite store - Wal-mart - and let him blow all his birthday money for stuff he wanted - another Wii game and another accessory.

But back to the Wii ... and the entertainment it has brought to the whole family. The Wii games require that you interact with them. You stand up and swing the control as if it were a real bat when playing the baseball game. You swing the control as if it were a real club when playing the golfing game. You hook 2 controls together and box with them when playing the boxing game. If you had been at my house this weekend, you would have been able to witness the hilarity of watching my husband and the boy in the middle of the living room, their arms flailing around as if they were drowning and their feet scuttling around on the carpet, huffing and puffing from all the exertion, looking like wind-up toys gone amok. It was like watching a pair of drunken circus freaks. To quote my good friend, Susan, "Are you people smoking crack?!"

So the WiiWii (as I call it which makes both the boy and husband aggravated - 'are you going to WiiWii now?' or 'isn't it time to WiiWii?' or "haven't you WiiWii'd enough already??' - are comments they don't seem to find funny) is here and I just have to live with it and make the best of it. Oh well, at least she didn't buy him a motorcycle or a subscription to Hustler. Thank God for small favors, eh?

Today I asked the boy if he was glad his mother bought him a WiiWii. He shrugged and said, "I was surprised it wasn't something from Fred's (the local dollar store chain the deadbeat mother favors) but I'm glad it was a Wii. She spent a lot of money to get me to like her, didn't she?"

HA! He's not quite as dense as I may have thought, eh?? Score one for the Wii and zero for the deadbeat mother!