A Study in Responsibility

Christmas came early for Dawn, or so she said last night when she came home and found me assembling the ION Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set ™. I suppose it’s sort of true – the ION (I’m not typing in that obnoxious long name again) would have been her Christmas gift…If I felt like waiting until Christmas to give it to her. As soon as it was existence was announced earlier this year I knew that us purchasing it was a foregone conclusion. We would have one. The real question was when we would have one.

We recently bought Rock Band 2 and have been playing quite a bit recently. My thinking was that if I’m buying an extravagantly over priced video game peripheral we should try and milk all the enjoyment we can out of it. We might as well have it while we’re still playing the game on a nightly basis. After a month or so the shiny newness of Rock Band 2 will wear off and that will leave Dawn playing the drums at her regular frequency, like she has been for the last year. So I’m not worried that it won’t get used after the initial sheen has worn off Rock Band 2, Dawn does not appear to get bored of playing the drums….it just seemed like a shame not to enjoy the game to fullest while it was in it unbridled new game glory.

Or so I tell myself. Rationalization is a beautiful thing, no matter how tortured the logic is. If that doesn’t pass the test, then I’ve already cooked up a second reason I needed to buy the drum kit. When Dawn was in grad school she bought me Steel Battalion, at the time it was the most elaborate Xbox video game peripheral available. Last night I returned the favor by buying her the most elaborate Xbox 360 video game peripheral available (that I know of). We decided that it is the responsibility of the person in school to give extravagant video game gifts in order to help the non-student cope with the lack of attention they are receiving. Perhaps it’s not an ideal system, but there are worst things in the world than being told that you’re appreciated via the medium of video games.