Call of Daddy

This past year, we decided that we would let our son play the game “Call of Duty”. I believe this one was additionally named “Black Ops 2”. I am not a “gamer” and my mom’s basement is too far away (though is very nice), so some of these things I had to discover along the way.

His friends and classmates have been playing these kinds of games for years, but we finally agreed that he was mature enough to handle the simulated violence. I was not sure if the same could be said of his new online playing partner, “JizzLordCumBalls”. We made him deselect the bad language which he has of course never before heard anywhere near our house and initially only let him play only the zombie portion of the game. I suppose the reasoning was that killing the undead was a little more morally acceptable. They’re already dead anyway, right? And let’s be honest, a zombie outbreak is probably a lot more likely than a new Nazi/Soviet/North Korean invasion (with all due respect to WOLVERINES!) and at least those skills could possibly transfer.

Eventually, I let him move on against real pretend soldiers, and he played a good deal of that and then even linked up with some friends online. I just made him agree to mute everyone else and not give his name or address to any 15-year-olds who are “new to the area”, “lonely”, and “looking for friends to party with”. At some point, somewhere around 38,000 hours logged, he asked me to play with him. Probably needed help from his old pop, I figured. Well it’s no surprise that a boy might need the guiding hand of his father.

Now this Playstation thing seems to have added a few buttons since the days of Mario Brothers. There are about 50 buttons on the thing. And not one of them is A or B. Aim, Shoot, Run, Look, Jump, Change weapon, Throw grenade, Call in airstrike, Stab, Plant a mine, Crouch, Lay down, Use a map. I probably missed several others. And you need to do all of these things at the same time in rapid succession. I tried to do these things and failed miserably. Death after death. Some caused by my own grenades. The only people I managed to kill were guys on my own team, which is officially frowned upon. I don’t know, a guy comes at you with a gun, you shoot him, right? I can’t tell what color their name is. Isn’t that profiling? I did heroically take out a gun position, but my son told me that it was “one of ours”, so apparently I wasn’t supposed to do that. And our team had it only because some player killed 20 opponents without even dying once. Oops. I redefined the term “friendly fire”. I think we were actually kicked out of a few games for my repeated iniquities.

So I resigned myself to safely hide in the corner of a room and wait until someone came in through a door. Then I would (theoretically) waste them. Cowardly? Yes. But a man has got to know his limitations. And so I hid. And died. And hid. And died again. Rinse, repeat. I was so terrible at this game that every person I ambushed (though this word usually implies success) somehow had time to be surprised, see me, identify me, target me, and kill me. Sometimes topping it off with a bonus stabbing for good measure. All before I could take them out. Oh well, I just didn’t want to be the worst guy out there.

Each round always ends with a dramatic slow motion replay death of the last person killed. One time we laughed as one player repeatedly ran into a brick wall while the enemy came up behind him and took him out with a casual “head shot” (these are extra points). “Look at that dummy! He’s gotta be worse than me, right?”

“That is you. Hey everybody, that’s my dad. I’m so proud!“