Granny Adventures

"Mummy, you have to see it in your head... Can you see it happening?"

That is a one-line lesson on visualisation. Similar to what I tell expectant mothers - visualise their birth, their labour etc. But this time, the lesson was for me. From my fishball boy Owain no less. He intoned it very solemnly too.

The scenario? The Granny Game.

I am, I have to confess, hooked on the granny game. This is the computer game called Granny in Paradise. Little old lady granny goes in search of cats, evading spear-carrying Tiki men, gorillas in tuxedoes, dogs and robots. We had bought the game for Isaac and downloaded it onto the PC. One day I sat down to try it out and that's it - hooked. So Isaac and I have been alternately competing with each other to see who has the highest scores and alternately helping each other by offering advice on how to get through each level. There are more than 100 levels - we've both since passed this already. So the granny itchy me went off to buy Super Granny 3 with more than 200 levels! So Isaac and I are now ploughing through that.

KH is amused/exasperated by us. The younger kids - Owain and Caitlin - are our audience. (Hence the earlier words of wisdom from him after one particularly frustrating round when Granny kept dying and dying and I was going aaarrgghhh!!)

And Trin? Just loves to nurse when I'm banging the arrow keys during the games. So sometimes when granny 'dies' I go: "Aiyah, see lah! Trin, you shouldn't have moved - I couldn't dig a hole fast enough!" Bad mummy to blame the baby, eh!

KH says that I get very anal when I watch Isaac play, offering advice all the time, that I should just leave him alone. Anal?? You haven't seen HIM offering 'advice' when I play! He says, in his usual rapid-fire way, stuff like:

"Mum!! For goodness sake, why are you always, forever, doing the wrong thing???"

"Dig a hole. You have to kill them here. Dig a hole. DIG A HOLE!! Now mum, dig!! DIG!!! Aargh! I told you to dig a hole! See lah!"

"Now run. Run mum, run!! No, no, no, not THAT way!!"

"Can you for once stop caring about getting all your flowers? Just run already lah. Get out of there! I don't understand whats so important about getting flowers when your life is at stake!!"

"Forget the cats. Granny is more important. Sacrifice the cats now!! JUMP!! JUMP!!"

I put up with this running critical monologue all the time. Can get very distracting. So sometimes I shush him. But when its his turn to play, its my turn to give the critique! Sometimes when I can't get out of a tight spot, I hand him the keyboard and tell him to go for it and get me out. Thats when I feel my age. Somehow he just has the knack to quickly figure out the best 'strategy' or 'route' to get Granny out alive. Whereas I usually have to sacrifice a few Grannies before I make it.

Playing Granny is always very fun with the kids all around. The girls tend to gasp and scream when Gran hits a tight spot. And the kids give the bad guys in the game names - like Crazy Poodle (for the demonic looking pink poodles with red glowing eyes that come after Granny). "Crazy Poodles' coming!" they cry as the poodle appears.

And for all the trash-talking that Isaac and I do, I think Granny has helped us bond in a certain way too. Reading The Wonder of Boys, it is similar to what Gurian says: that we need to communicate at their level. We need to reach them on their terms - and this means speaking the 'lingo', using their competitive nature etc. As a mother and a female, reaching out to boys is different from reaching out to girls. Girls are easy - (sort of) we share the same girly-issues. Like Gillian and I 'bond' over talking about fashion/clothes, celeb gossip (she is really, as they say in Chinese "Ba-gua"!) But Isaac is at the age when the boys move away from their mothers. So Granny is one very useful bridge between us. And so is Harry Potter - but that's a whole other blog post.

So if friends find that I am less often posting on AP or replying to emails a bit slower - ah, blame Granny. :-)