a Bejeweled-ler at last...the world is not safe

As I explained in my previous post, I'm more fond of typewriters than I am of technology.  I was born in the late 70's to parents who couldn't afford the ATARI/Nintendo stuff until I was well into my early teens, and D&D was too mathematical for me.   Consequently, I never caught the Gaming Virus.  I spent time with trees and poetry journals.  I haughtily accused my younger brother of wasting his time on games that turned his brain to groats and his eyes to marshmallows.

Then, I got an iPhone.

It all started off so innocent--why wouldn't I want cool, free game Apps like Chess and Connect Four on my phone?  You know...just in case I was ever bored somewhere.  And then I found the TETRIS App.  Ooooooohhhhh....that was the one and only game I was able to play on the Nintendo--everything else required complex eye-hand coordination or riddle solving.  TETRIS was simple--fit the pieces, make the line, get points.  Awesome.  I could play TETRIS forever.  Thank goodness it eventually gets too fast for me, because if it never did, I would never stop playing it.  That App was worth EVERY CENT of the $4.99 I paid for it.

A few years ago, I heard of some new games on desktop computers...Chuzzle and Bejeweled.  My gaming roommate, of course, was playing them all the time, and once again my snobbery kicked in.  I thought highly of myself that I wasn't wasting entire evenings on matching lines of things that exploded.

But then my sister started to play it, and my mother, and my husband's mother (like every day) and my sisters-in-law!  Everyone, especially the women in my life, would take time out of their days to tinker around with these virtual jewels the would do-si-do and explode!  Just a couple months ago I heard an audio article on All Things Considered by NPR about how insanely popular the game has become, especially with women who are at home on Facebook a lot.  I shook my head at the country. Shouldn't we be connecting in person?

Then one day it all hit home--there was my husband flipping his finger over Bejeweled 2 on his iPhone...and he had PAID for it!  Finally, I broke down and tried it on my new desktop computer.  All it took was one session and I was hooked.   The gleaming jewels, the mysterious music, the sounds...click, click, PSSHHH!  And then a really scary voice ushers you through a beautiful, rainbow wormhole of happiness and wonder.

Yesterday, I bought it for My iPhone--only $2.99.  Worth every cent.