Tic Tac Toe, Pick Up Sticks, and Noodles

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "With all the electronic gadgets out their you still can't beat some of the simple old games like "tic-tac-toe" and "pick up sticks."

Now you might say - "What? Are you kidding?"

Well, my answer would be - "No, I'm not kidding. And, here's why!"

During an IM (Instant Messaging) session last week with my grandson, "Noodles", when I asked him what he wanted for his 9th birthday he said "PSP."

When I typed - "what's PSP?" he responded "Look it up!"

So, of course I responded "WHAT! LOOK IT UP! I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!"

Of course he then LOL LOL LOL'd and typed "Play Station Portable."

So, I did a little googling to find out what this electronic device was. Turns out it's another portable game console only for PSP3 by Sony. Well, my grandson doesn't really need yet another game console, but...... you know how it goes as grandparents.

"Noodles" came to visit Nana and Grampy for a sleep over the other day and to do some birthday shopping and he and I spent several delightful hours shopping, eating lunch, shopping some more, etc. And, believe it or not, he actually was tired of shopping before Nana was. I of course, was delighted and had to rib him about that. At my age I don't get to beat him at much so this was a pleasant surprise.

In any event, we bought a PSP and brought it home. I had some work to do on the computer so Noodles sat in my study with me playing the PSP game. After about 1/2 an hour he came over to me and said "Nana, what are you doing?" To which I replied, "Working!" To which he replied, "On what?" To which I replied, "On my websites and blogs!" To which he replied, "Show me!"

Since I was on my "Gray Is Beautiful" blog I scrolled down the sidebar to show him what was there. The "Gray Is Beautiful" dolls didn't want any fancy gadgets on their blog - no, no, no. They wanted some old fashioned tried and true games of "tic-tac-toe" and "solitaire" for their sidebar - so I added them.

Well, when we got to the modules for the two games "Noodles" wanted to play. We lost at solitaire and then he wanted to play "tic-tac-toe" which we did and to my delight we ended up playing for over an hour. He was happy. I was happy as I was beating him, but the point was that an old fashioned game had held his attention for over and hour. Albeit it was an old fashioned game in a modern computerized fashion - but, still it was tic-tac-toe and , still, it had captured his attention. I also like to think it was playing with Nana that also helped capture his attention for so long.

The next morning we had several hours to kill and since he'd already played his new PSP games for about 1/2 and hour that morning he was looking for something to do.

So, I took out another old fashioned game of "pick up sticks" and we set about playing. Well, an hour and a half later we were still playing, and , yes Nana was winning at first. He quickly caught on to the tricks to getting your stick out without moving any of the other sticks and was soon beating Nana. But, the point was that we had captured his attention again with another old fashioned game. This time, it was the plain old fashioned wooden sticks version.

The point is it just goes to show you the newest and latest electronic gadget isn't always the best and a game might be "old fashioned" but that doesn't mean it still can't be #1.

I guess you don't get to be "tried and true" for hundreds of years without being pretty good. And, "tic-tac-toe" and "pick up sticks" are definitely "tried and true."

Do you think the PSP will be able to claim that in several hundred years? I don't think so.