Our Pink, Furry Addition
Meet Rita. We are quite possibly the only family left in America who, until now, had not adopted the glorified beanie baby that is a Webkinz. This was our daughter’s birthday gift. It took her a while to grasp the concept of her toy having a whole clandestine life on the internet separate of what she sees when she looks at Rita sitting on the couch:
DD: “But I did feed her, Mommy…see…I put a plastic piece of pizza in front of her.”
Me: “No, Dear, she needs to be fed online too.”
DD: “Huh?”
But now she’s gotten the hang of it, logging on once a day (with my assistance and supervision), shopping for furniture, getting groceries, the whole bit…or at least the smallish bit we can fit into 15 minutes.
Armed with the attitude that we would not be logging into the Webkinz Vortex more than once a day for a few minutes, I researched just how much attention these things require to prevent them from dying or getting a complex. Turns out they can’t die (that’s a plus) but they can get sick. Sometimes it’s from lack of care and “sometimes they just get sick because something’s going around,” the FAQ stated. Oh, that’s great. I’m germaphobic enough. Don’t make me slather hand sanitizer on my daughter’s cyber-pet, too.
If nothing else, it’s helping my daughter with the concepts of budgeting and basic responsibilty. She’s saving up for some fancy furniture, but I secretly wish she would earmark some cold, hard Kinzcash for a backyard pool. It is getting hotter, you know.
Either way, after several days in our care, Rita’s happy, health, and hunger-meters are all at 100. I wish people came with happy, health and hunger-meters. That would simplify things, I think.
Gotta go…Rita’s probably hungry.
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