A Monumental Day... seriously!

This weekend marked the first of many monumental days in the life long video game journey of Salvatore Robert Morris aka. Sammy. (Really I'm not sure if it was a monumental for him or for his father).

I purchased NBA 2K8 at Target and brought it home to use as a teaching tool for Sammy to grasp the fundamental concepts of basketball. You know - one team goes this way and the other team goes that way - you pass it to the open guy until he has a good look at the basket and then that guy shoots it in. It's too cold outside and he really gets bored after about 5 to 10 minutes of just one on one so I figured a video game was perfect.

Little did I know that Sammy was ready to take that leap from playing with his leapster to playing with the big boys on the Playstation 2. After about one game, he got the general feel and idea. After that the gloves came off.

He was the Suns and I was the 76ers. Hey - I had to give him SOME advantage. I told myself, "I'm going to actually play and see how he does against real competition." Well - after the first half he was beating me by 4 points. By the end of the third quarter I had cut the lead down to 1. (If Sammy could have gotten the concept of the free throws he would have been up by about 8 or 9. He missed every free throw.)

Then, halfway through the 4th quarter, he got tired and asked to go to bed. It went something like this:

S: Dad - I'm tired. Can I go to bed?

D: Dude - it's the fourth quarter and it's practically tied. You can't cave now!

S: (a little whiny) But I'm tiiiiired.

D: Ok - we'll pick it up tomorrow.

By this time it was past 9pm at night and I could see his eyelids getting heavy. We turned the PS2 off and called it a draw.

Since then he's been asking to play all the time but we haven't really been able to. I showed him how to play against the computer so I'm sure that by the time I get home tonight he'll be ready to take me to school. Tonight I'm going to be the Heat and I'll let him be the home team 76ers. Good luck, Sam!