the everyday adventures of sabrina

i am a rock star, in one little boy’s head.

recently, i took a vacation, and as part of it (the fun bit), i stayed for five days with my friend kim and her family. kim and her husband kevin have two sons: kelson, the elder, who is around 11, and kyle, who is around 8. the kids’ ages are plus-or-minus two years, i’m really an awful guesser of ages. at any rate, kelson likes roller coasters and kyle is still fond of carousels, so that’s the age differential there.

so this time i was down there strictly for vacation, with no grown-up activities like a soapmaker’s gathering to distract me, and the boys were very excited about this. as soon as i showed up, there were things to show me and things to do. and, since they’re a family of indians fans, and i happened to be there during the white sox-indians series, there were ball games to be watched and taunts to be exchanged over that.

both boys are big gamers. kelson plays a lot of ps/2, and wanted to show me all the cool tricks in the new spiderman game. he tried to get me to play, but i’m not a big console gamer, and the only ps/2 game they had that i was familiar at all with was Gran Turissimo 3 — not to be confused with the only other ps/2 game i’m familiar with, which they did not have, Grand Theft Auto 3. i felt moderately bad, as it turns out that i’m so out of practice with ps/2, and my wrists so abominably picky, that i can’t play GT3 anymore longer than ten minutes or so without my hands absolutely killing me. this did not stop kelson from spending hours playing GT3 for me, unlocking various cars and games and winning money to mod the cars, so that i could play with all the cool gadgets.

meanwhile, kyle wanted to show me The Sims.

in The Sims, he had created a little world, with a little blonde SimSabrina, who goes about her life every day wearing purple pants and a halter top. SimSabrina is lives in a large mansion with a butler and a maid. she has a large estate with fanciful outbuildings, and the house is accessorized with things that only a young boy would pick out, such as a crystal death’s head skull and a buried treasure chest. SimSabrina has so much cash that the game’s money display simply reads all nines, and it does not go down when she buys things such as forty dollar cat treats.

i was ridiculously pleased to observe that, all material wealth aside, SimSabrina still fixes her own plate and carries it to the table at meal times, and then loads the dishwasher before going to bed.

when i asked what SimSabrina does for a job, kyle stared at me like i was crazy, and said that she was a rich rock star and didn’t have to work.

“what does she do all day?” i asked, genuinely baffled.

“she takes vacations.” and he proceeded to demonstrate, taking little SimSabrina on a camping trip, hailing a taxi in her purple pants and halter top and heading to the campgrounds where, so far as i could tell, SimSabrina interacted with no one.

her social meter on the game consistently read low, in need of friends. poor SimSabrina was so alone that the high point in her life was when we went to the pet store and bought her a black-and-white cat, and named it George. this was at my urging, because while i am able to tolerate disparities from reality such as rock stardom and idle wealth, the idea of not having a cat is foreign, and wrong.

then SimSabrina took another vacation.