"Why did you put that there? You're destroying
the house! I just built that."
"Fine, if I can't put that there I'll go build
my own and you won't be invited!"
“You’ve already taken
over this one. Somehow the living room is now a stable with two horses in it.
There are twenty dogs in my bedroom.
There are twenty beds in my
bedroom. And why are all these parrots
in cages? I can’t even walk through the place. You stay here and do what you want, and I’ll
go build another house.”
 |
| The main area of Logan Land. It's a bit chaotic, but it has it's charms. |
“But I want to come
too!”
“Okay, but this one’s
gonna be mine okay? You have to build it
like I say.”
Two blocky characters
hop and trot through a similarly blocky world, away from the jumble of blocky
glass and blocky stone and blocky dirt.
In a way the world resembles a 3D, open world version of the original
Super Mario Bros. game, minus the giant green pipes. The two characters choose
a spot on a hill, and one begins clearing blocks so that the surface is
flat. While he’s doing that, the other
one begins to build about three feet from him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m building a
clubhouse.”
“I don’t want a
clubhouse.”
“This is my part of the
house.”
“But I said this is my
area and you have to build it like I want.”
“This isn’t on your
property. This is on my land beside yours. I’m building a clubhouse.”
“Okay well if you’re
gonna do that I’m gonna make changes to it when you’re not playing.”
“Why would you do
that?! That’s not fair!”
“Well it’s not fair that
you’re building on my land either, is it?”
“But I’m on my land!”
“You know what? Fine.
Build the clubhouse. But you can’t build in my house.”
A few minutes pass. The foundation of the house is completed, and
the character that is building the house begins setting rows of blocks that
will become walls. The second character,
having completed his clubhouse just a few Minecraft blocks away, wants
something else to do. So he climbs down
from his elevated clubhouse and hops onto the flat surface of the foundation
that character #1 has been clearing for thirty minutes.
He begins digging.
“What are you
doing?”
“I’m building a
basement.”
“I don’t recall asking
for a basement.”
“It needs a basement,
and that will be my part of the house.”
“But this is my house!”
“Not all of it! Some of
it needs to be mine!”
And the cycle repeats.
 |
| My house in the center, with an unplanned basement beneath (unseen) and a wooden clubhouse with random white sticks littering the base, and apparently a light show going on behind the house. |
Does any other adult
ever hear themselves argue with their child and realize that their mental and
emotional capacity shrinks to match that of the six-year-old boy with whom
they’re arguing? By now it’s probably evident that this exchange is happening
between my son and me. We’ve played Minecraft together off and on for at least
two years now I’d guess, and we always have fun. We do not, however, always get along. And
I’ll be damned if I don’t revert to a whiny little bitch when I can’t build
this fictional house on a glorified child’s game to my exact structural and
architectural specifications.
The worst part about
this, I always realize later, is that my son is wanting to play with me right
then. This is potential for some good
quality time I'll have with him, time that won't last forever. How many more years will I have of him
destroying what I built in that game before he decides he's too cool to play
Minecraft anymore? Will I still turn the
game on and stroll through our Frankenstein monster of a house after he's given
up playing it? I suspect there will be a
time in the not too distant future when I'll be begging my boy to build a
stupid room to house his towers of caged parrots and stalls of skeleton horses
and potion-making tables. I mean, who doesn't want a world with a house built like a giant chicken with a doorway for an ass?
 |
| Logan's "chicken house." The butt's the doorway. I do like this one a lot. |
Moral of the Story: Let the kid build the ridiculous room onto your playhouse, you
near forty-year-old squall tit.
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