I get nostalgic and even melancholy about the strangest things. I went downstairs this morning and my parents were using the WiiFit. They made some space in our usually cluttered living room to have people in the house on New Years Eve. Since there was open floor in the center of the room, my mother (because Im sure it was her rather than my dad) got the things set up and was weighing she and my dad. (She tried to weigh the dog, too, but he wasnt being cooperative.) The Wii has a really cute-ified interface. Maybe you know it. Little cartoony character versions of all the people in the house line up on the screen and you pick one to tell it who you are. It even knows Wonka, the dog, is a pet, so it tells him to ask his owner to do tasks. It also says things like I havent seen so-and-so for a while, or offers reminders of peoples birthdays. This is sometimes problematic for me. Not all the time, but often enough that it keeps me from using the system. How is it problematic? I cant help but think of the array of little people as a snapshot of the state of my life. This is all my family; the people who share my house with me. People I care about a lot. And someday, Im going to move away from them. Or one of them will move out. Or something else will happen and one of those people wont be here anymore. But that little cartoon version of them will still be there, treated like family by a game console that wants to know how theyre doing and why it doesnt see them much these days. I get emotional about endings and changes. The dissonance between the inevitable changes in real life situation vs the static nature of the loving sharing of living space that the Wii displays is jarring. It makes me think of how little time, in the end, I will have the opportunity to be with these people that I love before we part to follow our different paths. Its especially hard knowing that it is fairly likely that I will be moving far away in less than a year. It hurts. Not to mention that, though I assume someone has removed him from the system by now, it reminds me of the Wii asking my parents why it hadnt seen our housemate around a month or two after he was struck by a car and killed. I didnt even experience that myself and it still stabs me in the gut. And now I find myself missing people in my life who I see every day. Or more accurately, I think about how much Im going to miss them in the future and its almost the same thing. Its unpleasant. And it makes me glad I spent a while last night playing a game with some of them.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 17:40:20 +0000
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