Of Camping Out in the Living Room

When I was little, playing a game in the "tent" in the middle of a winter afternoon would typically entail a deck of cards under a blanket spread nicely over our card table (and, if we were getting ultra fancy, we'd throw in another couple of sheets and some folding chairs and even make sure the 13-inch T.V. and nearby V.C.R. were incorporated into the tent interior - no, we weren't exactly Little House on the Prairie, but it was the basement-edition of rustic to us).  Those were the days.  The days of, "Remember when?"

When my daughter says she wants to play a game in the tent, she literally means her tent.  The one purchased for her by Gram & Grandy, the one that requires construction by Daddy because tent poles are slightly outside of her realm of capability at this point (but so are blankets and folding chairs for that matter - at least if she's going to make anything useful out of them) - the tent that comes with the pop-up climbing tunnel and fold-back flaps.  And the game?  Rather than a round of war (hoping for the Walter Ace, of course), she'll just take the iPad, tuned to Mommy's taste of music while she plays electronic Memory.  Yes, my friends, times have changed.