I got a video game for Christmas.

It’s Epic Mickey, which I play on the Nintendo Wii system. If you’re familiar with how the Wii controller works, it’s a handheld wireless remote that you wave at the sensor bar, which can be placed either above or below the television. How you wave or move the remote determines your character’s actions on the screen and in the game. High-tech? Possibly. Stressful? Way more than I like to admit.

Video games have never been my forte. They’re a fun activity that I can waste hours on here and there, but most of the time I get way too caught up in the game’s drama and stress myself out to the point where I just have to quit altogether. The only game I have ever completed is The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, which came out in 2004 and I played on the first generation Xbox. Except, I didn’t really start playing it until 2006, well after my brother had abandoned this play system for the Xbox 360, and by then I was in college and wasn’t about to be the girl who brought an Xbox with her to school to play one Lord of the Rings video game all by herself in her dorm room. Alone.

I fought so much with this game that I didn’t even finish it until roughly January 2008.  I read all the cheats, I had codes printed out, I knew what was coming before every boss challenge, and yet I still freaked if my character came close to dying or losing the quest. Most of the time, I’d be so wound up from the previous challenges I had either won or lost that losing one big one was enough to make me pack of the system and quit for another six months, or until the next school break occurred.

This has always been funny to me, since I’m not generally the type of person who gets visibly worked up in a seemly stressful situation. I tend to take all things into consideration, handle things calmly and then make a judgement based on a full evaluation. My stresses usually don’t break free until 3 a.m., when all I want to do is sleep but can’t because I just have too much to think about. (Not really, but I have to blame sleepless hours on something.)

Back to Epic Mickey (and video games in general): this game is killing me. I can’t seem to figure out any part of it, and what’s more, the Wii controller is just beyond frustrating. Jamey thinks the remote might have been acting out when I played with it before because it was programmed to think the t.v. is a square and not a rectangle, which he has since corrected. (Our t.v. is a rectangle and not a square. But aren’t all rectangles squares? It’s just a square is never a rectangle, right? Geometry was also not my forte. I digress.)

However, controlling a paint brush on a t.v. screen with a handheld wireless remote is a problem that I’m also not sure the game’s programmers fully evaluated before making this game public.

Mostly, I just like to blame them for creating a kids’ game that I am now all worked up about because Mickey dies too quickly. He’s a wimpy character that can’t really fight, and what should be an enjoyable, relaxing game is instead a stressful challenge. (For me.)

It’s only good to play when Jamey is around to do the double jumps for me or other challenges that I can’t get my Mickey to win.

I knew I was marrying him for something.