/life/Nintendo+have+problem/3373784/story.html#ixzz1mef3kJu4On a humid Saturday afternoon, inside the neutral-coloured walls of a home in suburban Ottawa, two children, ages four and six, engaged in a debate that has bedevilled mankind since 40,000 B.C., when Homo sapiens adopted spoken language as the primary means of human communication, replacing calligraphy.
"I'm Mario!" the four-year-old yelled.
"No, I'm Mario," the six-year-old protested. "You're Luigi!"
"No, you're Luigi!"
"I'm Mario!"
"No way! I am!"
And so on. Though this sounds like a heated discussion you might overhear at the annual Congress of Italian-American Plumbers with Amnesia, it was actually a fight between my daughter and son. I had just set up our fresh-from-the-box Nintendo Wii video game console and started a game called New Super Mario Bros. On our television screen, two overalls-clad characters -- Mario, dressed in red, and Luigi, wearing green -- waited for my children to guide them through a world of killer mushrooms and grenade-chucking turtles.
"This is going to be fun," I told Ella, my six-year-old daughter. "You have to save a princess."
"You can shoot fireballs at the bad guys," I said to Jack, my four-year-old son. "And you can smash bricks with your head."
Though each held a Wii Remote, the controller that makes the game characters run and jump and duck, Ella and Jack just stared at the television, arms limp. After a few seconds, Jack awoke from his trance, looked over at the couch, where I was sitting, and said he wanted to be Mario.
A look of extreme displeasure immediately flashed across Ella's face. Uh oh. Soon, angry shouts filled our living room. The epic Mario/Luigi debate had begun.
There are several certainties in my life. I know that every time I sleep for more than seven hours, I will wake with a stiff lower back. I know that every time I turn on my computer, I will be prompted to download a new version of iTunes. And I know that every time my kids are in the same room, they will fight over something ridiculous.
If one of them wants something, no matter what it is -- a sticker, a toy neither has played with for months, a rock in the backyard -- it immediately becomes the most desired object in the universe. If Jack wants his lunch on a yellow plate, that plate instantly becomes the only one worthy of carrying Ella's grilled cheese sandwich. If Ella finds a marble underneath the couch, well, how can Jack possibly be expected to survive the next five minutes of his life without that marble?
I had hoped the Wii would be different. The only reason I bought it was to provide my kids with an activity they could both enjoy at the same time. At least, that is what I told my wife. The truth is, I bought the console so I could play Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, a video game that is just like real golf, without all the walking and fresh air. But I figured that when I wasn't pretending to hit 300-yard drives down digital fairways, Ella and Jack would have fun playing games together. Boy, was I naive.
Then again, perhaps my desire for my kids to get along is not so much naive as selfish. I don't like all that fighting. I like peace. I like quiet. Conflict, however, is a defining element of almost all sibling relationships. According to psychologists, aggression between siblings during childhood and adolescence is the most common type of conflict in all of society. Some studies even suggest that all this squabbling is productive, that it helps children set personal boundaries and build identities separate from their siblings, while learning about the limits of acceptable behaviour.
Still, a parent can only take so much kiddie conflict. And after 10 minutes of Mario-based verbal warfare, I had reached my hourly limit. It was time to bring the Mario/Luigi debate to a close.
"Guys, guys, calm down," I said. "It doesn't matter who's Mario and who's Luigi. They do the same things. If you don't stop fighting, I'm turning off the Wii."
Jack and Ella stopped shouting. They looked again at the television, where Mario and Luigi patiently waited. They were quiet for a while, mulling over their dilemma. Finally, Jack turned his big blue eyes toward me and, in a voice many decibels lower than it had been moments before, broke the silence.
"Dad," he said. "Which one is Mario?"
Roger Collier appears every second week. E-mail: rogercollier@hotmail.com
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