A moment, not so beautiful
“Moooommmmm. I’m bored. Can I have your phone?”
I dug into my pocket, trying not to drift off into the next lane on the highway. “Yeah, OK.” I handed it to her. “Here you go.”
She browsed through my apps. “Ah,” she said. “I’m going to play Chalky!”
For those of you who don’t know what Chalky is: It is basically a desk toy built into an iPhone app. It was originally done when iPhone was very young so it has limited features. It’s cute — basically a stick man who reacts to the phone’s built-in accelerometers and microphone. It bounces off the walls and dances if it hears sound.
There’s a fairly in-depth YouTube video on it here.
At some point, the developers stopped making him just bounce around and added the ability to “pin” the figure’s hands, feet, head or whatever, making the figure dance around it’s pinned appendage like a doomed insect struggling to break free.
The “pin” feature is, disturbingly, the child’s favorite feature.
“Mom! I pinned the little man!”
I shuddered a little. “That’s great sweetheart. Don’t you want to play something else?”
“No,” she giggled. “Look. I did another one.”
The traffic was light so I peeked over.
“Oh, ummm… Jeeze. Ah-hem….” I glanced at it again to make sure I saw it right. “Well, are you sure that what you want to do? They don’t look very happy….”
She ignored me and giggled maniacally.
I glanced in the back seat where my husband was napping. I thought about waking him up to see this, but decided he didn’t need the image in his head.
“Look, Mommy! Look!”
“I’m going to get more men and pin them!”
Cripes. It just kept getting worse. “Hey, look! A hawk. Don’t you want to see the hawk? It’s a pretty hawk…”
“Nah.” She just kept pounding at the phone with her stubby finger.
I took a deep breath. “Sweetheart, how would you feel if you were pinned in that part of your anatomy?”
“It’s just a fake man, Mom.”
“Well, I know… but…” I glanced over again. “Did you have to pin them there?”
She sighed a dramatic sigh. “Never mind. I was bored with it anyway. I’m going to play dress-up princess now.”
“Heaven help the prince.”
