Parenting 101

Part of Zoe and my nightly ritual is computer time. Usually I'll sneak down into the basement with the hopes of getting an hour of time to myself to peruse the box scores, plot my roto baseball strategy, organize and reorganize my iPod or look for porn. After about an hour, Deborah will start throwing individual pieces of dirty laundry down the stairs at five minute intervals. If I still haven't gotten the hint, she'll just send Zoe down after me.

Zoe and I play lots of games in the basement. Sometimes we'll run on the treadmill together. Sometimes will dismantle the laundry basket and use the metal rods to fence, or play hockey. But mostly, it's computer time.

Computer time with a 3-and-a-half year old general means she calls out a random cartoon character, while I call up the game sites in question. She has little interest in operating the mouse herself, although I do try to encourage her. Rather, she watches me play the games.

Some of these games are fucking hard. I give you Goofy Goalie, for example. I swear they rig this thing to drive parents insane. I have yet to score more than four goals on Goofy.

Then there's Dora The Explorer's Puppy Adventure. Took me a year to figure this one out. There's no better motivator than a 3-and-a-half-year-old shrieking, "Daddy, you're not doing it right!" Which is rather ironic, since that's what I shriek at reporters in the office: "You're not doing it right!"

But my current favorite is Mickey And Friends Super Racer . The best part of this game is you get one "life." None of this PacMan shit of three "lives." You get one mulligan. If you fuck up again, you're done. So you race around this track and you have click to collect "fuel" to complete the race. And you have to time the click just right. Otherwise, you run out of gas and the game is over.

Zoe gets kind of excited during this game. So last night she stood up in her computer chair and started jumping up and down. In so doing, she obstructed my view of the monitor.

"Zoe! Sit down! Daddy can't see the screen. You're gonna make me lose the race!"

Was that bad parenting?