Random Esquire

Watching Boss sit down to play Wii is vaguely similar to watching the metamorphosis of cocoon to butterfly. Actually, more like Bruce Banner into the Hulk. And not so much vaguely similar as frighteningly similar.

Boss has a pretty even temperament. She neither gets overly excited nor overly upset about anything for long. And so, I’ve never really seen her downright drop her blob. That is, until we bought a Wii.

When I hand the remote controller to her, I can see her eyes glaze and fingers twitch. Fortunately, enough of her good sense remains before she begins that she tightens the wrist strap. She does not just flick to swing a tennis racket. She stands, bouncing from one foot to the next, eyebrows furrowed and muscles tensed, waiting…waiting to slam that remote into your head if you get too close. She turns into…John McEnroe. In the heat of battle, she’s near cold-cocked me and banged her hand more than a couple of times on a table sprinkling it all with obscenities and objections to calls of in or out.

She’s that person who will deliberately wait until you scratch your nose to bean a pitch at your head. And if you play a game that requires that you take turns, she will twitch with impatience and bark commands on how to do it right until it is her turn or I bark back that she’s turning Béla Károlyi on me.

Today, she sat down to play Ratatouille. It was like Joe Pesci was in my living room. Yelling, stomping, etc. And two hours later, she was curled up on the couch, spooning Little Filthy and you’d have had no idea that shortly before, she might have killed you if you stepped in front of the screen while she was attempting to swing over to a piece of cheese. Tomorrow, I’ll come home from work and find her calling the remote her Precious.