Originally posted: Thursday, July 19, 2007 4:39pm
If you have not played The Sims computer game before, you need not read the following. If you were ever, at one point in your life, addicted to playing The Sims, you will most definitely be able to relate:
God, I loved them. It didn't occur to me that they wouldn't make it. After my computer crashed several months before, my beautiful friend Alvin had managed to rescue the majority of my beloved machine's memory. My music files survived, along with old lesson plans I'll never use again and recipes for dinners I've long since committed to memory. Perhaps it's the stuff that doesn't matter that endures. I couldn't wait to see them again. It had been months since I had been able to play with my electronic dolls (a girl never grows weary of it, I guess) and I eagerly loaded my CD drive with the first of four Sims installation discs. But once the game finished installing, I realized that my community of Pleasantown, formerly constructed over the span of 3 years with the love and passions of a benevolent guide (me, of course), was now a hellish nightmare of erased lives.
The uneasiness came on quick and settled into the very center of my stomach. Dina Caliente, back in the prime of her youth with blond hair and firm skin, ensconced in some torrid, gold digging affair with neighborhood tycoon Mortimer Goth and living with her sister Nina. As I look at her, I remember how much I hated the life she was living—I remember she was my first project. Money was her self-selected aspiration, and God (read: I) forbid I take that from her. A creator learns quickly that free will is a bitch. We compromised and she married Mortimer Goth without much of a fight. Shortly after giving birth to their son, David (named after my very own Irish twin), Dina's appetite for money and expensive things became an oppressive weight on the household, so I guided her toward the medical field. It was not easy for them—Mortimer, an extremely old man taking care of the newborn, and Dina fervently playing chess and peering through telescopes at night to build her logical mind. Around David's advancement into toddlerhood, Old Mortimer kicked the proverbial bucket, leaving Dina a young single mother. She had come a long way since her shallow, money grubbing days, and my faith in electronic humanity was strong.
I thought about all of this as I now watched the screen to see Dina dancing in a skimpy two-piece bathing suit on the top deck of her house. How could I start over with her? In my old game she had died—a highly respected Chief of Staff, culinary expert, accomplished painter and novelist, leaving behind a loving husband Don, sister Nina, son, David, two grandchildren, Alex and Sophia (named after my own niece), a great grandchild, Lucy, a niece, Haley and nephew, Jack, two step children from her first marriage to Mortimer, Cassandra and Alexander, and a step grandchild, Madison. All of whom had had individual lives and careers and relationships and memories and aspirations. No, that bare belly that wiggled before me did not yet know the stretch marks of pregnancy nor the panicked rushing to vomit of morning sickness. She was, at this moment, an unattached entity. Was it fair of me stop the dancing and force her to invite Mortimer (again living) to her house for some intimate hottubbing, just to start the whole process over again? Surely this new game would not follow the exact line it once did. David may never appear. The fruit of Dina and Mortimer's passions might this time create a little girl—and thus would disappear forever the lives of David, Alex and Sophia, and little Lucy too. My computer killed them once; I didn't know if I could handle a second loss with the knowledge that they are not only irrecoverable, but that Dina would be able to carry on without them in a shameless amnesiac state.
I know now that life moves inescapably forward—like the first Super Mario Brothers—the screen pushes you onward whether or not you're ready, and there's no going back.
When I think of all the hours I devoted to that electronic doll house I quiver with emotion. If I were to calculate the hours applied to building and decorating additions onto houses so the growing families could have a more convenient bathroom or a nursery, the time invested in increasing their cooking skill so they wouldn't burn their houses down and die among the flames, all those homework assignments in school and, later, term papers in college, the immense amount of courtship and joke telling and backrubs and games of "red hands" that led up to the baby producing "woohooing," the countless decisions made in order to help my Sims advance in their careers as physicians, military officials, actresses, criminals, lawyers, scientists, slackers, politicians, and athletes, the exhausting parties for birthdays, graduations, and weddings that always caused more fatigue than joy for my Sims, the innumerable hours set aside for the unavoidables like paying bills, bathing, making friends, being at work or in class, using the bathroom, feeding babies, changing diapers, repairing appliances, washing dishes, cleaning toilets and countertops, buying groceries, eating, taking out the trash, and sleeping, and the infrequent but imperative moments of nursing illnesses, extinguishing fires, begging for mercy from the Grim Reaper when a loved one's life was in danger, and mourning the loss of a friend or family member, I would be utterly ashamed of myself for so much wasted time.
So, after considering quite seriously a new voyage into the romances and aspirations of electronic beings, I had Dina call Don, the young, hot, bachelor next door (to whom she had been married in her past life when she died) for one last romp in the sack before I uninstalled the game forever. I always thought it was funny to watch them pass out immediately after the fireworks of woohoo.
R.I.P. Pleasantown
2003-2006
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