Hip Hip Hooray today is Webkinz Day! Ok, I know what you're going to say. "Cass is this another one of your strange little holidays like Mother Goose Day (May 1) and Frog Jumping Jubilee Day (May 19th). What are you going to blog about next My Bucket's Got a Hole in it Day. No silly! this in an important holiday! Besides, Hole in the bucket day isn't until May 30th. (Strange little piece of family trivia here; when my daughter was a toddler she called her bottom her bucket. So having a hole in your bucket has a WHOLE different meaning to us!) Anyways......... Webkinz Day marks the anniversary (this year it's the 5th) of the day Ganz (a Canadian company) first released Webkinz. Now according to my thing only 11 of you are reading this and I'm guessing that Lisa L is probably the only one who has no earthly idea what a webkinz is. In short think of it as a Beanie Baby with an on line component.
I used to mock one of my friends who collected Beanie Baby's (One year for her birthday I glued a doll to a can of beans and added a lable that said "B"s Beanie Baby! She didn't laugh). A few years ago when my 10 year old daughter wanted a Webkinz I refused on the basis that she was much too old for a stuffed toy and computer game. Now here we are 3 years later, she has 7 of them and I have ummmmmmmmmmmmm? 12! But hopefully by Mother's Day (yeah a real, real holiday!) I'll have 15 so I can get my second super bed! So what happened? Peer pressure first of all. I "oh so helpful" ladies on my favorite parenting boards convinced me that not only did all of their kids have a few but they themselves played with them. So I caved. And then I thought it was kind of fun and started "babysitting" H's while she was at school. That was fine until we disagreed about what on line clothes to buy the little critter; custodial disputes if you will. Then I started giving her into trouble for not doing her daily Webkinz chores; I have a hard enough time getting her to do chores in real life never mind in Webkinz land but hey. So by then it was pretty obvious that I needed my own; dozen.
What's the appeal? Sometimes it's the thrill of the hunt. You need to find 36? gems to get your "legendary crown of wonder." It took me a looooong time of searching 6 virtual mines to find them all. Now I've got 2 crowns and am working on my 3rd. There's also virtual trading for stuff that's pretty cool. Right now I"m in it for the shopping experience. Every time I play my hippo/beaver/lamb/caterpillar/pink flamingo/dog/goat/dragon/turtle/elephant and frog earn money. Money that I spend furnishing my 23 room, 9 garden mansion. And like the front of my current notebook says "shopping (even the fake kind) is cheaper than a psychiatrist. I'll say! This being America even in real life I could either spend $20 at my favorite thrift shop and get a lot of therapy or I could spend $20 at the counsellors office and get 1 minute of therapy. My husband of course prefers that I get my thrills by clicking the "wheel of wow" that earns me $20 kinzcash that I put towards a navigation control center for my space room.
Before anyone mocks me I'd like to say 1 word: FARMVILLE: 80,085,797 monthly users!
And speaking of games that we mock I'll take "rock, paper, scissors" for 500 please Alex. Rock, paper, scissors is a kids game right? Silly North American of course it isn't. Turns out that RPS or rochambeau or kauwi-bauwi-bo as it's called has been around in Japan since the late 19th century. The first time I encountered it outside of my elementary school playground was on my first night in China. After an exhausting flight from Vancouver, being met at the airport by a big bird puppet (don't ask) and 40 degree C heat and 100% humidity, then being told that I was to live with 2 strange guys, I was taken to a street bar to meet some of the other teachers from my company. Sitting in a plastic lawn chair, drinking ice cold pineapple beer and practicing picking up peanuts with chop sticks I noticed something familiar about what the men at the next table were doing. "Are they...............?" "Yep" I was told by another teacher, "it's a drinking game here; actually it's an everything game here and it's huge." In my 2 years in Asia I would come to appreciate rock, paper, scissors as a great decision making tool. Have 2 students arguing over who's going to go first? Make them rock, paper scissor for it. It worked 100% of the time and was a binding agreement. It worked so well that foreigners would sometimes suggest amongst ourselves that the whole North/South Korea debate could be settled by one long rock, paper, scissors match. Winner takes the whole peninsula. WE ARE JOKING OF COURSE! Someone very close to me does a very dangerous job in that region. I'm all too aware of the political climate and cultural differences.
Turns out that rock, paper, scissors isn't only an Asian game or a kids game either. Turns out there is an actual United States Rock, Paper, Scissors league (no I"m not making this stuff up!). Check it out at http://www.usarps.com/ or http://roshamblog.wordpress.com/ Laugh all you want but they're competing for $25,000 college tuition. Yes, I do see that they are competing in bikinis and it has as much chance of being a credible sport as beach volleyball (which I don't mind, we used to play it not on the beach but in the actual river). But hey as one girl put it "I could make $25,000 just by putting my fist in the air." Hmmmmmm, where is my daughter who's going to college in 4 years? I bet if she started practising now......... As for me? I'm about to go see if it's time to spin the "wheel of yum!"
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