I’m About to Destroy My Kid at Hungry, Hungry Hippos
Time’s Up, Princess
What started out as a bit of simple father-daughter fun got real in the blink of an eye. The blink of an eye being the amount of time it took for my daughter to beat me at our first game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos. The score was 13 marbles to 7. I was pissed. That shit doesn’t fly in my house.
My daughter had her lifelong dream fulfilled the day before when she unwrapped Hungry, Hungry Hippos for her fourth birthday. She’d been bugging me about it for months. Apparently the TV ad with plastic colored hippos devouring slippery little marbles got her really pumped.
Now, here she was, sitting in front of me in her little princess pajamas clapping her hands and laughing. Not because she humiliated me, she didn’t even know she won, but because the chaotic cacophony of the snapping hippos exceeded her wildest expectations or whatever.
“Yay! We both won!” she exclaimed.
Her words were like salt in my wounds.
She wanted to play again, but I was like, “No, it’s time for bed. The hippos are tired.” She falls for that every time. All I have to do is ascribe feelings to inanimate objects and she goes for it without question.
