The irony of playing ‘video games’

Should I go with the tall spiky plants that have wide flocked leaves and blue conical flowers, or should I choose the rounded low shrubs, with leafy greens and platesized pink blossoms?

I’ve already ruled out whatever abomination has taken root in the only other option - yellow.

Still, I don’t want to spend too much time on this decision. The stakes aren’t high. I’ll just close my eyes and pick one.

As I open them again, a dust devil has formed, circling around the strip of land I’ve been tasked to fill.

When it clears, tall blue flowers with spiky leaves are revealed.

Voila!

“I can’t believe YOU play ‘Gardenscapes’,” the boy remarked as he sank into the space beside me on the couch.

Suddenly, I’m self consciously aware of what I must look like: a mother, with grey frosted hair, holding her phone at arm’s length, swiping the screen with one finger hoping to crack a few nuts.

I bring the screen closer toward my body in a protective stance. As if keeping my son from seeing the balding, middle-aged bachelor avatar strolling around the grounds of some dilapidated old mansion I must renovate will save me from embarrassment.

Is it apparent that I’ve already spent the better part of an hour raising the needed capital for a handful of completely ridiculous restorations, by trying to clear a neverending series of Tetrislike games?

It’s all fairly straightforward, once you learn to work the puzzle. Like how you can string together five gems and earn a laser-shooting rainbow disco orb, which, depending on how you aim it, can obliterate a row of cookies or turn a single paper airplane into an airforce of fruit, nut, and berryseeking missiles.

I don’t even mind that I’ve been stuck on Level Fifty-Six for three days. “I find it relaxing.” The irony of a mother playing “video games” for the express purpose of turning her mind into mush — the modern equivalent of immersion into the momentary respite of warm Calgon Waters – is not lost on me.

Nor am I ashamed that I’d rather garden in the rarified air of cyberspace than dig in real dirt. I have enough dead flowers at the edge of my yard.

My son sees it a little differently, though.

“Doing the same thing, over and over hoping for a different result? I think there’s I different dictionary definition for that one.”

He thinks I should aim higher: like a space station in some distant galaxy, where colorful people dressed like welders wander around different airlocks performing random tasks while spying on their co-workers.

“Come on! Play Among Us! It’s fun. I’ll teach you.

“I don’t know. It sounds too much like ... an office job.”

“Pffffft,” he sputters. His eyes roll to the ceiling and then settle into their most burning, sideeye position. A tiny explosion bursts forth from his own closely held screen and the unmistakable soundtrack of his player decompensating.

His voice breaks into a good-natured chuckle.

“Hmmm. Can I play yours? Maybe I can get you to Level Fifty-Seven.”

Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.