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Old 09-20-2004, 10:26 PM   #18 (permalink)
Xenomorph
Crazy
 
Location: St. Louis, MO
The 'no other kids to play with' problem here is the central issue.

When I was a whippersnapper of a single-digit age (or could remember such days as recent events) I had two friends in my neighborhood that were my constant comrades-in-arms throughout growing up, as well as a brother who's not even 2 years younger than me. Between the four of us and the occasional meetings we had with other kid-cells from a street or two over, there was always something going on. We would go to each others houses and play our brand-new 8-bit Nintendo systems for quite a while, but for every time we hunkered down in front of Mario or the Ninja Turtles, there was another adventure cooked up. We'd go out and run along our neighborhood's pathetic little sewer-creek, organize progressively larger-scale games of hide and seek, tag-wars and whatnot, or hang out at one of the trees that had enough perches for all of us.

Then everyone moved away. As the young couples scraping to raise their little infants became middle-aged people with bulging wallets, my friends' parents got themselves better houses when we were all 12 or 13. By the time I was getting into middle school, my brother and I were pretty much the only ones left and there wasn't too much to do outside, so we basically just played Nintendo until we could drive.

My parents sat me down from time to time and kept telling me that 'there was a whole world out there' and that I should 'pursue some of my other interests' or 'take some time off of the Nintendo', but other than the 15 minutes of recess I got during the school day and the occasional playdate with a friend outside the neighborhood, video games were far and away the most interesting activities I had available to me. My parents would ban me from them from time to time and actually kept with a one hour of non-academic computer time a day for quite a while, but nothing really came of it. Getting me off the computer didn't magically bring my friends back to the neighborhood, so I wasn't going back outside just to stare at the grass.

That's my story. If you want to get your kids out in the dirt on outdoor adventures, try to hook them up with a few friends in your area. My parents were actually pretty heavy-handed in getting me acquainted with the other boys my age in the neighborhood, although I obviously couldn't detect it at the time. It's a lot easier for a group of rowdy little post-toddler, pre-pre-teens to occupy themselves playing a game at the common ground or in the driveway than it is for them to have to wait for their turn at a controller...unless they've all got their own controllers and don't know each other.
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The facehugger is short-lived outside the egg which normally protects it. Armed with a long grasping tail, a spray of highly-concentrated acid and the single-minded desire to impregnate a single selected prey using its extending probe, it will fearlessly pursue and attack a single selected target until it has succeeded in attachment or it or its target is dead
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