Super Maia Operation...

When I was young I liked the game Operation. Remember that one? Its the one where to have to carefully remove plastic bones without touching the sides of the holes.

Then my mom finally got me a Nintemdo. I played a lot of video games. And I was pretty good, too. I got so good at Super Mario Bros on NES that I could hold down the "run" button and have Mario race through each and every course at full speed. I would quickly get the fireball flower and would never get hit once all the way through the last castle in all 8 worlds.

I have aged and find myself playing much less games than before. But my skill with fine motor skill is still blessing my life. Case and point: Maia at bed time.

This girl is a light sleeper. She can fall asleep in her crib, but not always and not without some tears. The quickest way to get her unconscious is to hold her. And that works great. But, then comes my masterful eye-hand skills. Putting this light sleeper back down into crib without waking her up is harder than lifting a plastic thigh bone in a sea of metal contacts.

And the stakes are higher. Like Operation, should we fail, there are loud noises to ensure all know of your failure.

Unlike the game, you can't laugh and go on after a mistake. You must start over. My ability to compete Super Mario Bros in one take has trained me well.

I'm getting pretty good at this. Today in church Anna put Maia to sleep but was to leery of putting her back into the car seat. I cracked my knuckles, hummed the Mario theme and pictured myself holding Maia with tweezers and lowering her into the car seat without letting her arms touch the sides. I came out victorious.

I think all expecting parents should be required to fulfill a quota of play time on video games prior to delivery. It worked for me. And to think, my mom thought I was wasting my time playing all of those games. It turns out she should have encoraged me to play more. After all, I've never once needed geometry since I graduated. So much time wasted in my youth spent reading and studying...