influence

2001.03.10
Wow. I have nothing to say today. I'm having too much fun playing videogames with my friends last night and my cousins today.

It's funny thinking how I influence Ivan and Kayla. We're not biologically related, but we might as well be. They're both in middle school, and we often get together for Nintendo fests. I try to be a good influence on them, teach them how to be sarcastic and witty, make sure they don't grow up irony deficient, and how to trash talk with a certain amount of grace. What's funny is how months later they'll quote good lines back at me, like "You put the UCK back into suck" and (when their friend Hannah was having trouble manuevering her character's airplane in Diddy Kong Racing) "Fly Air Hannah-- you'll get there... Someday."

Maybe I'm a little harsh sometimes... I'm trying to get them so they're interesting to talk with and be around, so sometimes I'll use the line (misquoted from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) that was used on me when I went into a rambling story-- "here's an idea... next time you tell a story, have a point. Stories are meant to be funny or interesting. The stories you tell are neither of these things." They fear this line now! But, they do tell better stories.