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So, I gave my mom a Nintendo DS for Christmas with Brain Age game (which includes her favorite, Sudoku). I purchased it a few weeks before Christmas and set it up, charged the battery, and of course had to try the game before I wrapped it. It was a pretty amazing device, so I called her: "mom, did you get my Christmas present yet?" "No," she said, " did you finally think of something you wanted?" "Yes, I want a Nintendo DS". Now there is a pause on the end of the line. "Aren't you a bit OLD for that kind of thing?" she asked.
Great! And this was what I was giving HER! I never know what kind of reaction I will get, when I present new things to her.
So, at Christmas, I gave her her the Nintendo and told her that she could return it if she did not like it. But that she had to promise me that she would, at least give it a try. My grandmother and her sisters all had some form of dementia or Alzheimer's in their old age, and it was something that my mom worried about. My thinking was that this could help her feel some kind of peace of mind that she was doing something to exercise her brain.
Well, on the Saturday after Christmas, my mom called me complaining that it was 11 in the morning and that she had done NOTHING but play Nintendo...DID I MENTION MY MOM IS 71?!!? I told her that we could try to find some new games for her, and she was really excited, "they have other games?".
So here is it, not even a month since Christmas, and my mom's Nintendo goes out! HOLY COW!! Three days with no Nintendo. Her brain's age could go down if she did not play daily! She was proud that she gotten her brain age from 75 to 45 and she didn't want to lose any ground (though I suspect that was the excuse she uses now to play daily). So she went online to find what to do.
There are apparently only 4 (according to her) service centers in all of Southern California. Now, my mom was NOT about to mail this in and wait at least 10 days more to play! She drove all the way out to Chatsworth (the far end of the San Fernando Valley) to take her Nintendo in personally. The guys behind the service desk told her, "we'll see what we can do." "What!?!" she asked. When the guy tried to give her a receipt for her Nintendo, he had to convince her that he would only need about 2 hours to look at it, and he would not be taking it AWAY from her.
So, now I get a phone call from her (it was kind of hard to understand her): "Mom, are you eating?" "Yes, I am Costco having a swirl while I wait for my Nintendo." she said. "So, you drowning your sorrows in frozen yogurt?" I asked (I mean I could hear serious slurping noises in the background - she eats frozen yogurt really fast because she hates when it starts to melt). "I was NOT driving all the way home without my game, and them come back," she stated. God help those kids who work at the Nintendo service center. I am sure that they had no idea what they were dealing with
But her beloved game was fixed (needed a new hard drive) and all was right with the world again. She has not told me if her brain got older since her three day unscheduled hiatus, but I would have heard by now.
Given that my mom named her cars when I was a kid (the baby blue '53 Chevy beater, named Baby was sadly stolen!)...I am surprised that her Nintendo has not been named yet.
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