The iPhone, Oregon Trail, and My Unborn Children...

I used to kid LSU Friend that when she purchased her iPhone two years ago she became a better friend. We always knew the closest Happy Hour, we always had directions, and the “Free Ap of the Day” saved us from boredom while stuck in traffic many times. Her iPhone made her way cooler. I have had my iPhone since May and I’m pretty sure Boyfriend thinks I’m a way cooler girlfriend for having forked over my hard earned money to Steve Jobs.

Reason Why My iPhone Rocks (to boyfriend that is…)

Oregon Trail. Boyfriend and I just over 6 years apart, him being 6 years older, and I don’t think of him as an “old guy” or ancient by any definition of that word. We try not to talk about “what we were doing” when certain movies came out or music was popular because then this conversation happens…

Me: “Wow, I used to love that Puff Daddy song, Mo Money!”
Boyfriend: “Me too! I remember when it came out it was always on our mix CDs we played at Frat Parties.” (Okay he’s never said “mixed CDs at Frat Parties” but you get the picture… He was in college when that song was popular.) “Why are you giving me that look?”
Me: “You were in college?”
Boyfriend: “Yeah…”
Me: “I was in middle school.”
Boyfriend: “Um… yeah…”
Me: “Let’s talk about something else…”
Boyfriend: “Fast.”

But I was talking about Oregon Trail. So, about two weeks ago a co-worker told me I have to get the Oregon Trail Ap because (her words) “It’s AWESOME.” Okay, I’ll download it right now. But wait!!! Oregon Trail is so wicked awesome that I can’t just download it, but I have to be connected to my computer because the file is so big. Yeah, it’s that awesome.

Oregon Trail is nostalgic love for me. Like every time I hear the name I’m back in third grade begging a classmate to let me go hunting for them, because it didn’t matter if they had a huge stock pile of food, if you were given the opportunity to hunt buffalo you fucking hunted the shit out of those buffalo. Then you saw, “You killed 3,974 lbs of meat, but could only carry 17 lbs back to the wagon” flash on the computer screen and for a second you felt bad for the buffalo and the Indians and nature and whatnot, but by then it was time to ford the river and you forgot all about the plight of the noble buffalo. Oregon Trail was the coolest thing about computers back in the day. Yes the whole game was in black and bright green. Yes you could barely read the map because of the crappy 1991 computer screens, but you still begged your teacher to let you play.

That is, I begged my teachers to let me play. Boyfriend never had computers in school and thus never got to play the awesome game that is Oregon Trail. So, I downloaded it about two weeks ago and tried to explain the concept and game to Boyfriend. He quickly thought I was stupid for thinking a game about moving across the country was fun and exciting and quickly stopped listening to me. That is until I got to the part where you get to name your Wagon Party.

Me: “You think I’m stupid. Fine. You don’t get to be my husband. I’ll name my husband Vince Young.”
Boyfriend: “Wait. No. I wanna be on the wagon with you.”
Me: “Then say it isn’t stupid, or me and Vince will leave you behind in Independence, Missouri.”
Boyfriend: “It’s not stupid. Now put me on the wagon.”

So, Boyfriend became my travel mate to Oregon, then came the question of our children.

Me: “What are our children’s names? … Hello? Boyfriend, our kids… they need names…”
Boyfriend: “Dude, this is a very important decision. You can’t rush me when picking our children’s names.”
Me: “Remember this is just for a game.”
Boyfriend: “Well the first one is defiantly a boy. Name him Art.”

This kinda goes without saying as we have decided if we ever have a kid (which is so not in the plan) and it’s a boy, his name will be Art after Boyfriend’s grandfather, Art (Author).

Me: “Okay, child number one is Art.”
Boyfriend: “Well if we have an Art, we should probably honor your side of the family and have a Norl as well.”

That’s right. Boyfriend wants to honor my grandfather and have him be our second child in an iPhone game about traveling to Oregon. Hopefully he won’t get Dysentery and die.

Me: “Shouldn’t the last kid be a girl?”
Boyfriend: “I don’t think so. We need a real manly man name for the baby of the family.”

And then we sat silent on the couch for a good five minutes trying to think up a manly name for our fictional child in a game I just downloaded to my phone.

Boyfriend: “Well, I think it’s pretty obvious. Name kid number three Pedro.”

Yeah, that’s right. Our first two fictional children we named after the fathers of our mothers, and our third darling kiddo, well he was named after our plant.

Meet Pedro.

Two hours later when I finally reached Oregon Boyfriend was alive but had a bad fever, I had a broken leg, Art was grabbed and taken away by an eagle (yeah, that was new to me too), Norl got lost and was never seen again, and Pedro was in perfect health.