Pick-up Lines

My older daughter is into a game on her iPod called “Star Girl”.

According to itunes, the purpose of “Star Girl” is: 
Star Girl puts you in the high heels of an aspiring celebrity who is setting out to build her career as a superstar while having a ton of fun along the way! 

Really?

I dig into this a little more, asking my daughter some questions about what she thinks the purpose of the game is. Maybe get some details about the gameplay. Cause even though the game is downloaded via my account, since my daughter’s not old enough yet for her own Apple ID, god knows I’ve never played it.

So I ask some questions and learn that some of the things you do in this game are get boyfriends (not just any old boyfriends, mind you, but boyfriends like Tom Cruise, which I think qualifies this game to be categorized in “horror”), get gifts from these boyfriends, spend money (air quotes, please) on clothing, get a job, play carnival games (Me: “Huh? Play what?” Her: “Carnival games.” Me: “Wow. Which of these things doesn’t belong?”). 

Okay, I’ll let the vacuous nature of this game go for now. After all, I’m not immune. I killed many hours fighting incredibly difficult monsters and foes in the first two “Infinity Blade” games. So I get it, to each his or her own form of entertainment. I live in a glass house. 

At this point you might ask why my wife and I let her play something like this in the first place. Fair question. 

The app itself is rated 4+, but so what? When it first came out, the NRA’s shooting game war rated the same. So that’s certainly not going to the deciding factor.

No. Instead, the answer is that my daughter has a pretty good head in her shoulders. She can tell when things are silly, just for fun, or even inappropriate for her age. She’s got a good sense about these things.

Which leads me to the title of this post: pick-up lines. 

One of the things the game does is let you read “messages” from these boyfriends. And some of those messages are pick up lines. Things like “Do you have a map? Cause I just got lost in your eyes.”

I kid you not.

My daughter reads this out loud to me last night and asks, “Who talks like that?  Why would anyone think that would work?”

[internally] YES! [/internally]

Sometimes I wonder how I’m not going to be arrested when she starts dating. Last night I felt like maybe everything might-MIGHT-be okay after all.