Grounded Dad: Why My Wife Banned Me from Video Games
Let's get past the first hurdle here: Why is a 30-something-year-old man still playing video games? Well, I don't play video games very often. In fact, there was a period of around five years, after my first child was born, when I didn't play video games at all. But then one of my friends got me hooked on a game called Assassin's Creed.
I only play Assassin's Creed when the developer comes out with a new game in the series, which is about once a year. Also, at the start of each football season, I'll get hooked on Madden for a few weeks. Outside of that, my video game console is mostly used as a fancy Blu Ray player.
Unfortunately, the latest installment of Assassin's Creed came out at the end of October and I've been fascinated with it ever since. I am still a few days away from beating the game and being done with it forever.
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Anyway, back to the point of this post. My wife claims to have grounded me from my video game for one week. She even went so far as to hide my game and the controllers to the game console.
Why?
I've been training to run my second marathon. The marathon will be held in January, which means that the meat of my training is being done in the dead of winter. Due to some unfortunate timing with this weather, I've had to adjust my schedule a bit in order to complete my training. I was scheduled to run 18 miles this past Saturday, which is a distance I absolutely cannot skip, but it snowed about 8 inches the night before and morning of that day. The jogging paths and sidewalks were all and it made running outside practically impossible. (Running anything more than 13 miles inside on a treadmill should be considered a form of torture.) Instead of skipping the run altogether, I rescheduled it for Monday.
Monday came and my work day passed. At the end of my workday, I loaded up all my running gear and hopped in my car, made the 30 minute drive to the jogging trail, and began my run. A few hours later, with frost covering my shoulders and my beanie hat, and a pair of headphones frozen solid, I finished my run and hopped into my car.
My clothes were soaked through with sweat and within minutes I was shivering. My shivering continued on the drive home and I got really, really cold - that's what happens when a person drives a car that doesn't have a heater. (Yeah, my car's heater has been broken for the past five years and I refuse to pay the $1,500 it would take to fix the thing.)
As the minutes passed and my shivering picked up its pace, I decided I had to stop at my gym on the way home to hop into the hot tub. If I didn't hop in the hot tub, then I was definitely going to be cold for a week.
My mind was so focused on getting to the gym before it closed so I could warm up in the hot tub, that I forgot to call my wife to let her know I was safe and on my way home.
Oops.
The lady freaked out when she realized I wasn't home at the appointed hour. There have been many news stories about people getting killed on the trail where I run, which is why the trail is closed at sundown, and my wife does not subscribe to my theory that murderers do not come out in the freezing cold temperatures.
By the time I got home from the gym my wife was fuming mad. She was in a panic and ready to call the police to get a search party going.
I listened to her lecture for about 25 minutes when she finally said, "I'm grounding you from video games for one week."
Turns out, she meant it.
-By Cody Coombs
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