Once again, the world is marching along, doing its thing, and there I am, somewhere in the very back row. I’m so far back that by the time the sound of the beating drum reaches me, it is tomorrow already! I’m used to this because I am convinced that when God built me he installed a defective timer switch. It is nothing new for me to be out of step, in the wrong time -frame of things. I’m usually either far ahead of the crowd or so far behind in the race that I thought I was in the lead! Well, Life did it to me again, only this time it has now found a very clever way to steal my so-called ‘free time’ and it is making me work like crazy at having what I am loosely going to call “fun”. It’s about as much ‘fun’ as a recurring yeast infection! But, I digress…..
I’m talking about this fad/craze, gray hair- producing and time-consuming game called “Farmville.” Oh, don’t let the cutesy name fool you! There is nothing “Ville”- like about this game! “Ville” denotes to most of us a cozy little burg, somewhere out in the blue sky, green grass country where people square-dance, bake each other pies, cheerfully call out “Howdy!” to each other, and raise one another’s barns – all very comfy-cozy, right? Don’t you believe it! This game is designed to make you worry, fret, lose sleep, and to permanently attach your computer to your hip (or lap, depending on the model) and never, EVER be without it because, God forbid, one of your crops might be ready to harvest!! And, if you’re not there to harvest them, look out!!!! They will wither! So what, you say? So, you’ve just blown a whole bunch of your Farmville bucks (fake) money on wasted crops.
And…if you are truly serious about this game, you will take that plunge and start trading in your fake play money for the REAL THING. You will ‘feed’ your Farmville venture with real money because you want to get ahead! Yup, you heard me. This sneaky game really does expect its players to BUY what they call “farm dollars” so that the players can build bigger, better, more productive and more lavish farms! What a devious plan!! I want the guy who wrote Farmville to come manage my non profit organization! All this time, I’ve been doing it the hard way, asking people to please donate to our cause. Little did I know that all I had to do was to offer them a game, for Pete’s sakes, where they would actually spend real money, so that they could get ahead and prosper – all online, of course, and in a fictitious endeavor at that! How deliciously, deliriously, and decadently devious! And here I thought giving my members an online library of more than 3 gigabytes of information on our rare disease, as well as a fully interactive web site, was a ‘bargain’. Nope. What most people want these days, I am finding out, is to create the GWTW version of Tara without the hassle of fighting a civil war! And....here is the best if not sneakiest part: the game players actually DO help each other!
How ingenious! I ask you: who wants to be a bad neighbor? Not most of us, so we will help fertilize or pick crops, brush farm animals, and harvest trees of their fruit for each other. So, it is not just a singular person playing a singular game. It is an entire community that is being built, person by person, farm by farm, day by day, and literally hour by hour. I know, because like an idiot I got caught up in this and feel as if I am being swallowed up alive!
I wanted to see what all the hoopla was about. A couple of our volunteers were unexpectedly MIA over the past year or so and I found out from some of their “neighbors” (people on our mutual contact lists who also play Farmville – it’s like a HUGE spider web of people, but if you’ve been on a computer recently, I don’t have to explain what this is like) that they were busy playing games such as Farmville, or FV for short. I remember thinking, “What?” How could a game take up so much time and energy?? Well, let me tell you: I found out! I’ve only been playing about 1 month and what happened today told me that I need to STOP. Stop right now, before it is too late --and before I lose myself in a make-believe community or, worse yet, that I give in to the urge to actually buy some of those Farmville dollars! I got news for you – this is never going to happen! I’ve worked too long and too hard for my money and there is no way I am going to spend it on an online game when there are games for free, all over the web. Besides, I have real work to do, and people to take care of. FV, step off!
It all came to a screeching halt for me today when in my early morning haze (that is, before my second cup of coffee for the day), I accidentally planted about 40 plots’ worth of cranberries, poinsettias, and some other gunk, without stopping to realize when I’d have to harvest them all.
“Oh crap!” I chided myself when I realized what I had done. At least two of the crops would mature in about 4 hours and I had planned to go out this morning. So, what did I do? I went out, anyway. And was a nervous wreck the whole time!! I could not wait to get back home in time to harvest my crops—or I’d suffer the loss of about $2,000 of my fake FV ‘money’. And, I’d look like a poor farmer to all of my FV neighbors, to boot! And, for all I know, I’d take them all down with me, too!
HOLY COW! That did it for me! I harvested my stupid cranberries and what-not, and on purpose, did not replant anything else. My little Christmas village house thing still doesn’t have its lights, and that’s OK. It’s only Dec. 7, after all. HEY…wait a minute!! There I go again! See what I mean??
Still, I do have about $104K in fake FV bucks, and found myself wishing for that one more additional neighbor so that I could enlarge my farm’s area (Yep…they get you there, too! Fake money isn’t enough – you need to have a certain number of neighbors, too!)
I need to get back out in the real world, I think. Back to the old drawing board; back to trying to figure out what my membership in my own non profit organization needs or wants, or would like to have. And all I can do now is pray that the answer isn’t “Give us a game like Farmville!” Oh, God! Anything but that!!
Anyone up for a nice game of checkers?
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