A Matter of Perspective

“I broke more bones than you!”

“No, you didn’t. I broke 181 bones!”

“What are you two talking about? You better not be breaking bones in there!”

This was part of the conversation that took place at my house on Saturday.

“What are you doing?” I asked two of my grandchildren.

“We’re playing Roblox!” was the excited reply.

“I’ve never heard of this game before. What’s it called?”

The game is called “Broken Bones IV” and is part of the Roblox suite of games.

I was used to my granddaughter playing games like “Adopt Me,” but not this more violent game.

The goal of the game is to fall down a mountain and break the most bones. There is skill involved in this game as you can use different controls to make your falling faster and your landing harder, thus breaking more bones, spraining more ligaments and dislocating more joints. If you hit your head and get “concussed,” you get a lot of points in the form of money for the game so you can go up higher on the mountain so you can fall further and theoretically break more bones.

They seemed to be having so much fun, I had to give it a try.

I was called a “Noob” by my granddaughter because of my “lame” attempts at breaking my bones!

While she was breaking 60-80 bones, I was getting 20 or fewer bones broken.

As I listened to my two grandchildren play this video game, I got to thinking about all the things we did as kids that actually would have broken our bones—in real life!

We played king of the mountain, we rode our bikes at breakneck speeds down the steepest hills our part of Central Minnesota had to offer. My brother and I slid off of our metal barn roof.

We did stupid things and never did end up with broken bones. Of course, we never jumped off of a mountain, either, reaching speeds up to 282 miles per hour as we fell!

I must admit the game is a bit addicting. I found myself trying to figure out ways to break more bones.

I’m still not very good at it and I am getting a little bored of the game already.

But somewhere in the living room...

“Well, I am going to break all my bones.”

“Did you know there are 206 bones in the human body?”

Well, at least they are learning something.

Sigh...