dailydiatribes

I never give anything up for Lent.  I have no self control and no willpower, so I always figure it's not worth disappointing God every year.  He made me who I am, so I'm pretty sure He is well aware of my fatal character flaws.  I have deep and sincere admiration for those of you who can give up chocolate and quit swearing at your children for six weeks.  I'm not sure I could do that for six minutes!

I used to try and give things up, but two days into life without swearing, would find me forced into a situation where only the "f" word would do.  Or I would give up chocolate, only to find myself in Wal-Greens, curled up on the floor in the candy aisle, surrounded by Cadbury Creme Egg wrappers and asking God to forgive me as I shove another one in my mouth.  I have no self control!!

Every year I swear I will do better and every year I am cast into the shadows by those who managed to go six whole weeks without drinking sweet tea or eating bon bons.  Some years I'll pick up the Lenten devotion books they put out at church.  I start out the season, solemnly promising to read a devotion every day and meditate upon it for fifteen minutes.  For two or three days, I do great and then before I know it, a week has gone by and I have lost the book.  I find it again 12 days later and by then, I figure I've missed so much, I might as well just quit.  Meanwhile the people who swore to pray a decade of the rosary every day pass me by on the ladder to heaven, leaving me to linger on the bottom rung, dangling ever closer to eternal damnation.

But yesterday in church I had an epiphany.  The priest mentioned how television and the internet consume so much of our free time.  I squirmed in the pew, guiltily aware of my ever increasing Pogo addiction.  I tried to calculate how much of my free time is sucked up by meaningless computer games and to my horror, it was a lot.  "How many times", I thought to myself, "have you ignored your children to play a game of Blackjack?  How many times have you handed the blonde goddess the pack of matches she wanted, absently telling her to have a good time?  How many times have you said "yes" to the children, without really knowing what you were agreeing to, all because you needed to play five more games to win a badge?  Their childhood is passing you by while you sit at the computer and play Canasta!"  

I then tried to reason my way out of it.  "After all", I told myself, "I hardly ever watch television.  It's only on for an hour in the morning while I hit the treadmill.  And I don't smoke at all, nor do I drink to excess.  Still", I forced myself to acknowledge, "normal people don't sit mindlessly in front of the computer all day, shooting technicolor ducks and playing endless games of word whomp.  It's an addiction", I told myself sternly.  "And you can control it!"  So right then and there, I decided to give up Pogo for Lent.

Almost immediately, I teared up because I am right in the middle of earning the "blankety blank" badge on Qwerty.  I rock at qwerty; it's basically scrabble and I am damn good at it!  I only have to use 45 more blank tiles to win the badge plus 1200 tokens.  I am saving my tokens to dress my pogo mini as a viking warrior; this will cost about 65,000 tokens.  It's very important to have a well dressed mini at Pogo.  People totally judge you.

But I have to do it.  I have to give it up before it consumes me body and soul.  Before my children become crack addicted prostitutes and go on Jerry Springer to tell the world they would not be hustling in Miami if their mother had been there for them instead of playing Panda Pai Gow Poker.  So that's it; I'm done with Pogo until Easter.

I have not clicked on the icon at all this morning.  It's hovering there on my toolbar, beckoning me with its promise of endless hours of mindless pleasure.  But I am staying strong and resolute, determined to play wholesome board games with my children this afternoon and enjoy their remaining childhood years before it's too late.  I will haul myself up the next rung of the ladder to heaven if I have to kill someone to do it!!