To Wii or Not to Wii

I have mixed feelings about the Nintendo Wii. On the one hand it's pretty fun and gets me off the couch but the Wii is really unlike any game that I've played. In most games, you have a high score board. Nothing more satisfying then playing a game for a while just to get the chance to put your name up on the high score board. I've been on the Zwok leader board for years. Any time you fail to hit the high score, there's no foul. Just go and try it again. But not with the Wii. With the Wii games it keeps your score. It keeps all your scores. When you do well, you rise up the ranks against yourself. But when you don't do well, it is all over you for that too. Those bad games of baseball where you were having an off day and you got your clock cleaned are all there. It even sends you little messages of how you did that day. This brings up the Wii dilemma. When you are doing really well, there's that temptation to just stop playing. Should I quit now while I'm ahead and sit on the couch basking in my high scores. Should I regale friends with stories of that silver medal I won in tennis just two days ago or should I risk losing my Wii bowling pro status. It's all there, recorded. You can wade through your Mii messages about how you were once a superstar but now you're a failure. Do you keep playing till you crest that bell curve of achievement? Do you go out on top or keep playing till you're relegated to Wii obscurity? It's a dilemma that gives me pause every time I pick up the Wii. Then there's the insult of it telling you that you suck. How do you feel when you do the fitness test and it rates you a 46 year old? You do what I did, train and do it again till you rate a 31 year old. I guess maybe just for me this is all a big deal. Really now, life is like the Wii. You can't get rid of anything in your life. Facebook friends show up who know your past. That picture of you drunk at a college party gets posted to the internet. Everything your write gets recorded somewhere. Now even the president has to admit that he did drugs in college rather than get away with claiming to not inhale. I don't think the current president can get away with mincing words about the definition of "sexual relations". Now it seems that whatever you do, you just have to own it. So I am going to own my Wii failures instead of brushing them under the rug and blotting them out of history. The photo is of my best Wii bowling game, but since, I bowled a bunch of really lousy games and lost my "pro" status. Want to make something out of it?