wii

My inlaws gave the boys a wii for Christmas.  I wasn't too excited until one day John brought home wii Mario Carts.  Now, I am sorry to say, I play the wii at least as much as the kids do.  The game itself is fun enough, but part of my fondness for it was established about 10 years ago...

Just after John and I were married we were asked to babysit a family of five kids for a week while their mom went out to Utah.  The kids' dad had passed away a few months before and you could see them struggling to make sense of life without him.  But really, tragedy or no, these kids were amazing!  They were all so smart and sweet and they won me over instantaneously.  The oldest of the kids was in high school and the youngest, James, was about four years old.  So what does this have to do with playing the wii?  Well, James' favorite thing was to play nintendo Mario Carts.  He would wrangle John and I into playing with him at least once a day.  I never really played video games as a kid so I was terrible at it.  James, on the other hand, was actually pretty good!  When we would finally agree to play James would jump up and run downstairs to the basement yelling, "I'm gonna beat you!  I'm gonna beat you!"  and all I could do was laughingly agree with him.

After our week of babysitting was over, John and I agreed on two things: 
1)  We were not ready for kids just yet no matter how sweet and well behaved and
2)  One of our children would be named James

Every day as my own four year old James finagles me into playing wii Mario Cart with him, I feel a little twinge of deja vu and almost hear another James cheering "I'm gonna beat you! I'm gonna beat you!" 

So to James I. wherever you are out there, I call for a rematch!