- Appliance breaks.
- Appliance store where appliance was purchased less than six months ago says you have to call the manufacturer.
- Manufacturer’s 1-800 operator says “I’ve never heard of that happening before,” transfers call to the service department.
- Service department says they can fix appliance, but not until next Tuesday.
- Husband starts yelling at service department.
- Wife takes over.
- Wife calmly listens as service department says they’ll call Monday night to confirm that the serviceman is scheduled for Tuesday.
- Service department calls on Monday and says the serviceman will arrive on Tuesday sometime between 8 am and 5 pm.
- Wife starts yelling at service department.
- Husband eggs her on.
- Service department offers to reschedule but husband and wife realize this will only make things worse.
- Serviceman arrives Tuesday at 4:43, stays for 20 minutes and says he needs to order a part from the parts department.
- Parts department says the part can’t ship until next week.
- Sensing tension in the room, serviceman says husband and wife don’t need to make another appointment and that they can install the part themselves.
- Husband shakes his head in disbelief.
- Wife says “fine.”
- Serviceman heads for the door and then, at the last minute, turns and says “Of course, one of you will need to be here to sign for the part.”
- Husband goes for his throat.
- Wife grabs her 8-iron and beats him until he’s unconscious.
- Both string the serviceman’s body from a telephone pole outside the house as a warning to service departments, cable companies and deliverymen everywhere never to give an 8-hour window and then show up during the last 15 minutes without being able to fix the problem.
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Click image for amazon.com link |
If Nintendo can make ping pong, paper airplanes and bass fishing addictive, why can’t they do all the parents who pay for those games a favor and come out with Wii Homework? Every subject could be covered — Wii Lab for physics, biology and chemistry (where if kids blew anything up, they wouldn’t get detention and you wouldn’t get a bill for repairs); any number of Sim City knock-offs for Social Studies and History (e.g. Sim City: Jamestown, in which kids would have to decide between starving to death and turning cannibal); and some kind of battledome for math, where famous mathematicians from history fight each other to the death using the powers of Euclidean Geometry, Algebra, Calculus, etc. Even grammar could be a game where, say, kids rescue dangling participles, or help a peace-loving race of “nouns” defend themselves against the evil pronoun horde that’s trying to assimilate them, or even assume the role of an ancient wizard who teaches adjectives to stand up to verbs by uttering the magical incantation “l-y.” Levels would be the same as they are now, K -12, only instead of “graduating” kids would “level up.” Parents would have to pay a little more attention to what they’re saying, too, as some of those unconscious responses would lead to confusion: KID: Can I play Wii? The main problem with Wii Homework would be that as with all Wii games, kids would eventually fight over it. And while this would be satisfying on an ironic level, it would also mean parents would end up taking the Wii away for a week as punishment, leading to an awkward situation where the teacher would ask “How come you didn’t finish your homework like you were supposed to?” and instead of saying “The dog ate it” or “I forgot,” your kid would say “Because my parents wouldn’t let me.” Game over. |
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