brain age

Besides complaining about the war in Iraq and our country's treatment of veterans, I play a few video games. Surprisingly, not the shoot-'em-up type, at least not usually the shoot-'em-up type.

A week ago I finally bought Brain Age for my Nintendo DS. Cute little game that is supposed to help us aging folks improve our mental capacity. What could be wrong with that? I've played it a few times and it's OK. In my case it may be hopeless, but that's another story.

The exercises include: simple math calculations, reading aloud, remembering a grid of hi to low numbers, stating the color of a color word, such as black, which would be red, reading aloud, counting syllables in sentences. Then there is my not-favorite, called Head Count. In this one you start out with a few little people, then a house covers them up, and people enter from the left, and exit from the right. You are supposed to keep a running total and correctly enter the remaining number of people in the house.

At first I was in Iraq mode, which wasn't good. So, you can imagine that having failed miserably at keeping track of the little people, I figured they were all a blight on society anyway, and well, it gets worse from there.

Then I started to think about who this game is intended for, which is an aging population. Now, if you live next door to a house where people are coming and going at all hours, should you be counting them or calling the police? Even in my neighborhood, that's known as a crack house. So, I imagine old people's houses being burglarized by crack heads while smiling seniors are busy counting the traffic instead of phoning the authorities.

So, go ahead, play the games, but remember, in real life those little people running in and out of that house may not be harmless stick figures.