An Amusing Aside

Before my amusing commentary concerning children and gaming, I must fervently apologize for my lack of post yesterday. To explain without great detail, I was a soldier in Iraq, and having been in such a hazardous condition, I am from time to time, beset by hardships of a, shall we say, unique nature. When encountered by stress (money problems, crappy living situation, the holidays coming up, etc.), my brain takes it upon itself to perform a complete memory wipe and hard reset. One of those came upon me yesterday, and I was left completely devoid of memory concerning which game I was playing or what I thought about it, so I decided to continue on and post Friday's review and cut my losses on Tuesday's.
On to the story. I live in a house with children. They are not my children, but I am charged with them while their parents are out working or whatever it is that they do when they leave the house, since I obviously work from home. One conversation with Sydney (who is seven), struck me as particularly wonderful.
I was working earlier today, and Sydney walked into my room. The conversation went as such:
SYDNEY: What'cha doin'?
ME: Working.
SYDNEY: (looks at computer screen) No you're not. You're playing computer games!
ME: Yes. That's what I do for a living.
SYDNEY: (shocked and amazed) YOU PLAY COMPUTER GAMES FOR WORK?!?
ME: Well, I also write about them online so people can see if they are good games or bad games before they buy them. I save people money.
SYDNEY: (incredulous) So, there are BAD video games?
ME: You wouldn't believe.
SYDNEY: So what makes a game bad?
ME: *sigh* That's a big question. You have to take into account depth of characters, plot complexity and flow, there's physics engines and control setups...
SYDNEY: *blank stare*
ME: I lost you, didn't I?
SYDNEY: *nods*
ME: OK, a bad game is any game that makes you bored, or one that you don't have fun playing.
SYDNEY: So your job is to have fun?
ME: ...well, I guess so. Yeah.
And then she left. She's a very abrupt girl.
*cut to a half-hour later*
Sydney is playing on another roommate's computer and her father, Nate walks in.
NATE: What'cha doin' kiddo?
SYDNEY: Working.
NATE: No you're not. You're playing on the computer.
SYDNEY: Yep. Seth gets to play on the computer for work.
NATE: Yes, but Seth is a grown man. You are a little girl.
SYDNEY: Then what am I gonna do for work?
NATE: You get to go to school. You don't have to work.
SYDNEY: MAAAN! How come Seth gets to play games for work and I have to go to stupid school?
Nate: Just how the world works, kid.

I thought I would share that with you all. Look forward to "Torchlight" on Friday.