the joy of copy and paste2 min read

yesterday i went to visit my godson for a post-x-mas visit. his name is tarik, he is 10.

we share our love for computer games, so he was totally exited to show me his latest gaming conquests, ZELDA on gamecube and AGE OF MYTHOLOGY on pc-game. so there he was playing age of mythology, as me, but of course it was him doing all the clicking and dragging and house building and cow slaughtering and farming and most importantly battling enemies – like a maniac.
he would let me decide on the few choices given whenever we reached a new age, always suggesting what he would like me to choose with a ospiciously hovering mouse.

“i” played RA and later LOKI. tarik had of course previously grabbed (and memorised) all the necessary cheat codes on the internet. “O CANADA” gave him an incredibly powerful laser-spitting bear – “now i am already practically invincible”. “DIVINE INTERVENTION” gave him near endless supply of the tornados and earthquakes he could unleash on his enemies – “lets see what happens with these donkeys if i tornado them…”.

so there tarik was typing the cheat codes one-finger-eagle technique and frankly, that got a bit boring for me. so i taught him the *drumroll* joy of copy/paste. ctrl c/ctrl v.

needless to say he was teh psyched!!!
he had seen a friend of his doing this before, but had never found out how he did it. so from now on it was “DIVINE INTERVENTION” galore in serial ctrl v. and tornado after earthquake after attacking trees raged through enemy country. needless to say we finished LOKI in about 2 minutes time. “unfair, i wanted to show you all the sublime [his word!] powers you would get later on in the game”. the “unsublime” tornados had finished it all. bummer. but hey. i wanted to see ZELDA…

later, in the car as we went to buy him his soccer boots as a x-mas present, he told me: “i dont believe in all the jesus and god crap. me its the gods i believe in, like in age of mythology”.
i asked him which one was his favorite god. he said, “i like them all, because they are all different and all have different powers”.

then he told me, for the soccer eurocup this last summer he had been a supporter of greece… again because of the greek gods in his game.

so nobody tell me computer games don’t teach you for life!!!1