Tamagotchi gone

At some point I'll be ready to talk about our first child, Meisje. My wife and I had 4 frustrating years trying to get pregnant. (There are also a bunch of good stories about that, but I'm afraid they are not appropriate for public view-if you know what I mean).

After a few years of failure, we got a puppy to be our temp baby. She was a purebred black toy poodle that we named Meisje September Sunrise (purebred dogs get a lot of names). I'm not going to talk about it here, but I'll just say that it didn't go well. The lingering sadness from that experience is one of the reasons that I'm hesitant to get a family pet for my kids. That, and the fact that having 3 kids is enough 'pet' for me.

To put off the inevitable day when the 6 sad eyes come begging to me for a puppy, I've turned to virtual pets.


My oldest son asked for a Tamagotchi for Christmas. Have you heard of these? I remember them from a few years ago, but I thought they'd stopped being 'cool.' My son informed me that most of his friends at school had them, and that he really wanted one. It seemed like a waste of money to me. The thing is really low resolution and only has three button- what good is it? He got one for Christmas, but I thought it would sit in his drawer, unused and unloved. But, boy was I wrong.

He fell in love with this hunk of plastic and electronics (he must be my son!). You have to feed it, pick up it's droppings, play with it, etc. when it's needy it 'cries' by beeping. If you aren't taking care of it, it gets sick and then eventually dies. If you do care for it correctly, it grows and changes into different creatures. Supposedly it eventually will marry and produce offspring that you must care for. The best feature? They go to sleep at 8pm and don't wake up until 8am. This really helps with the kids bedtime.

To my surprise, my son really took it seriously. He even enjoyed picking up the droppings! (which is a serious advantage over a puppy). His Tamagotchi grew and matured and added more and more games and activities. He earned points by playing games with it that he used to 'buy' accessories for it- like hats, etc. He was looking forward to watching his Tamagotchi marry and continue the circle of life.

There was only one problem: School.

He goes to school for 7 hours. According to my son, the Tamagotchi will suffer terribly, or even die, if abandoned for 7 hours. You can pause the Tamagotchi. But, if you pause it, then it's not growing. So going to school was interfering with the development of my son's pet. This, you can imagine, was a source of much distress. I decided to let him take it to school if he promised to turn off the sound and keep it in his pocket except for recess. He agreed.

It worked fine for a couple of days. Then I got a phone call at work from my crying son. He had left it in his desk while he went to computer class! When he got back. it was gone. Someone had stolen his Tamagotchi!

He was so sad. He had really put a lot of effort into it. His reaction was (interestingly) a lot like if a real pet had died or run away. We agreed to go to the store to get another one. "But, dad", he said, "it was almost ready to get married! The new one will have to start over." Life is hard, then you die.

My 8 year old wanted one too. So I agreed to let him buy one. However, when we got to the store, we discovered that the Tamagotchis were the bomb, that latest thing, the 'must-have' toy. According to my boys, all of their friends have one, or are saving to get one. There were no Tamagotchis at that store or at any store. We looked online and even there they were somewhat hard to find. I did finally find some at Buy.com that could arrive in 4-5 days.

They finally came last Wednesday to much rejoicing. I'll let you know when the babies are born.