graceful swans of never topple to the earth.

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7 may 1997

3:40 p.m.

Dear diary, Good god, will everyone just please keep the damn things away from me? Everywhere I go. Dangling from every pinky and backpack within a seventy-mile radius. They are there. Everywhere. Bouncing. Beeping. Blinking. They're "Tamogotchi." A digital, virtual pet. An egg-sized, liquid-crystal life form which takes constant care to mature into a well-adjusted whatever-it-is. They were written up in the paper. They were hailed as the next fad-to-end-all-fads... and that was an understatement. Seeing them, actually, isn't that distressing. What scares the crap out of me is the seriousness with which people care for these digital pals. To say people get "attached" to their Tamogochi (Tamogotchis? Tamogotchies?) would be like saying super glue is "kinda sticky." Everyone's been twittering about them non-stop. "Look, mine's sleeping!" chimes the middle-aged lecturer in the bookstore. "Mine got his wings yesterday," squeals the tita chilling in Sakamaki Hall. "Can they gain weight above 99 ounces?" queries the counter person at the cashier's office, too busy participating in the first official Student Services Center Convention of Tamogotchi Owners to take my $1,400 check. And, inevitably, "Mine's named Hualani!" (Beautiful egg. Charming.) The beauty and bane of the thing is the fact that the process of maturation takes weeks, not hours -- pushing Tamogotchi out of the "game" category and pretty damn close to "hobby." It sleeps, eats, plays, misbehaves and yes, it shits. To keep it happy, you have to be diligent. Turn out the lights, feed it, play games, punish it and scoop its reeking piles of virtual excreta. I suppose, after all this care, you have to expect owners will get pretty emotional if their darling gets sick. Or, god forbid, dies. That's right. These things die. If there's anything I respect about 'em, it's the fact that the buggers croak. Leave a pile of shit around too long, forget to feed it... bye bye Tamogotchi. It gets better. Even if you tend your egg day and night, and even if your baby grows into the best of its many possible adult careers, it still dies! Welcome to Reality, Wisconsin, kids. They say children in Japan cry and hold funerals when an elder Tamogotchi goes. It's insane. And Nate thought "Chupa Chups" were bad. What's more insane, during my weaker moments, I want one. Thank god they're hard to get. Waiting lists at Liberty House, snaking lines at Kay Bee, Tamogotchi scalpers selling the $19 trinkets for as much as $80... no thanks. I'll save my money for Whitney Houston tickets. Heh. By the time I do have one, they'll be out of style... just the way I like my fads. I know I'd be a horrible mother, too. Not the least of the reasons being that I want to see exactly how the different forms of Tamogotchi death are handled. I've never seen a dead one (I imagine it's such a sin, no one would admit killing theirs even if they did), and I'm almost curious enough to endure a couple of days of sporadic, pathetic peeping to see if it gets little Xs in its eyes. The other option, I suppose, would be forming a Tamogotchi Death Squad. When one of the little critters is hanging from the backpack of an oblivious shoyu bunny, they're easy targets for some malicious button pushing. Sometimes I'm so morbid I scare myself. I'm going to be a full-time student again next semester. I wish I could say the decision to get back into the books came from a powerful, earth-shaking moment of enlightenment. I wish I could say I decided against quitting school to make my fortune in web design because I recognize the imperishable value of a college degree. But I can't. Instead, I've come to terms with the fact that my decision is a purely practical one, based on three simple facts: My mother offered to pay. The phrase "I quit" has come to the tip of my tongue more than a few times in the past few weeks. Without my job, I wouldn't know what else to do with myself. The job-versus-school thing will take a little work, given that even with tuition paid, I still need to pay rent. I was invited to move back in with mom, but the look on both our faces mutually conveyed a resounding, "Yeah, right." The more wisdom-prone around me seem to judge my rising frustration at work as the typical restlessness of a naive girl not yet ready to settle into the workforce. I think it comes more from dealing with far too many body fluids in a given workweek than any human should. The ironic thing about my struggle to control the occasional hotheaded instinct to quit is the word that some cuts may be coming down. Of course probably not for the RNs, but from the pool of cash we assistants are hired from. Ergo, now is not a good time to make any enemies. Unfortunately one of the nurses is still on the warpath, trying to track down who threw her Tupperware in the trash last week. (Hey, it was taking up half the fridge. And there were several warning notes...) Derek takes off the day after tomorrow, not to return until the end of the month. I tried to talk him into coming back in time to spend Memorial Day weekend with me, but apparently he's already incurred some other mysterious airline fees and won't dare to change anything else to come back even a couple of days earlier. Suffice it to say, there've been some... animated discussions on the matter. The case seems pretty much closed, but there's no question I got my two cents registered. Actually, this whole thing is the closest to a Genuine Fight (barring bickering over which restaurant at which to eat or being late for a date) we've had. In a strange way I'm almost relishing the feeling. The fuming, the growling, the grumbling... the earnest disinterest in seeing him every single day until he leaves... I dare say I'm still very much in my element. I just hope this isn't my natural element.