The DS Dilemma

Four wants a Nintendo DS. Do you know what a Nintendo DS is? I didn't, because I live in a hole, but basically it's this generation's version of the GameBoy. It's far less chunky, of course, and has wicked cool graphics, and a little stylus thing. If you get the "doggie game," you can use the stylus to pet the dog and stuff.

I'm sure you already know all of this, but you have to understand. I am an old, old woman. I am just now getting in on the whole "Crank Dat" Soulja Boy sensation. Nintendo DS? What, you mean like Dear Son? Down Syndrome? What? (Speaking of that, we used to have this total asshole dog that we called DS. We told people it meant Dip Shit, but it meant Down Syndrome. You can hit me with a blunt object now. I deserve it.)

Anyway, Four wants one in the worst way. She asked for one a couple months back, and I checked them out, and do you know how much a Nintendo DS costs? Like, a hundred dollars too much. If Four was, say, eight or nine, I would consider it. But she's four. I mean, I caught this child taping cards from the Dora Memory game to the back of an old shoebox lid, and then she tried to get the dog to eat them. She is not to be trusted with anything worth more than about a buck seventy-five. A DS? I don't think so.

She tried begging - Moooooom, all the kids at school have one!! Oh yeah, I'm sure the other four year olds have DS's, and probably they play them while they ride to school on their pink glitter ponies.

She tried bargaining - Mom, if you get me a DS, I'll never, never, never, never pee in my bed again. Four, the very fact that you need to reassure me about bedwetting means you are too young for a DS.

Fine, she said. I'll just ask Santa. You go right ahead, but did you know Santa's elves can't make electronics? They just let the Japanese do that, since they're smart an' all. Damn, she said, and I pointed my finger at her for cursing, and she ducked. Like she expected me to beat her or something. Thanks for the vote of confidence, kid.

And now my ingenious child is playing the "pity me" card. My poor, underprivileged little girl is forced to use a Spanish language car seat manual and the tube from a broken ball point pen as her DS and stylus. Worse, she is constantly handing me the "stylus" and plaintively begging me to just pet Lisa, Momma. Lisa's my dog, on my DS. She's a Broken Retriever.

That car seat manual is getting pretty ratty. It's been a makeshift DS for a couple weeks now, and it's gone with us everywhere. Four even brings it with us to the library, and shows the librarian her "DS." She shows it to the clerk at the grocery sore. She made the pediatrician look at it, and it wasn't even her appointment. And every time she shows someone her "DS," they eyeball me like I am the most pathetic parent ever.

We're going to see my brother, The Genius, and his family tomorrow. Just for a few hours, but of course Four, being a girl with a purse and a mission, has already packed everything- an empty chapstick, two ten dollar bills from Monopoly, a broken frog figurine, and, of course, her "DS."

Part of me wants to throw caution to the wind and get her one (probably from like RentACenter os something... it's a recession Christmas, after all), but then part of me says, Wait a minute. She has gotten far more use out of a Spanish language version of the Flex-Loc manual than she will ever get out of a Nintendo DS.