“Dad!” my sons approached me breathlessly. “Did you know they’re making an Angry Birds Transformers?”
“I’m not surprised. They’ll make Angry Birds anything. Angry Birds Do Taxes. Angry Birds This Old House. Angry Birds This Old Car.” And then, for the coup de grâce, I added, “Angry Birds Beavis and Butt-Head.”
Do I need to tell you my very young boys quickly lost all interest in Transformers and wanted to know everything about Beavis and Butt-Head? OK. They wanted to know everything–and I mean everything–about Beavis and Butt-Head. Especially Butt-Head.
So then I made the mistake of telling them about a time, not long after I’d met their mother, I was over at their grandmother’s house with their cousin, who was probably about 12 or 13 at the time. He was flipping through the channels and Beavis and Butt-Head was on, so we stopped and watched it, mostly to see if we would get in trouble.
It’s probably a good thing that I stopped short of telling the boys that the plot of the story was that Beavis and Butt-Head bought tampons and ended up with the tampons in their noses after they asked a woman to show them how to use them. That would have been inappropriate, and would have led to some conversations I didn’t want to have just yet.
Then again, all of that was true about bringing up Beavis and Butt-Head at all. That was months ago, and the boys still ask me about Beavis and Butt-Head almost every day.
They also ask about Angry Birds Transformers almost every day, or they did. On Friday at work I picked up my phone and noticed an Angry Birds Transformers icon on my home screen. It turned out I wasn’t the only one my boys ask about Angry Birds Transformers. I guess they asked their mom at least every once in a while as well, and she obliged them by trying to load the game on their tablets. And then it didn’t work. Or so she thought.
Oh, she only thought it didn’t work. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, it installed on my phone, 19.6 miles away as the Honda Civic flies, just fine.
I know it installed on my phone just fine because when I tried to dismiss the notice that the game had loaded, I didn’t swipe correctly and I accidentally launched the game instead. The game then proceeded to serenade my coworkers, plus everyone on my afternoon conference call, with its loud theme music at 1:41 PM. I fell all over myself trying to shut my phone off quickly.
“So,” I said when I got home about three and a half hours later. “I understand Angry Birds Transformers is out.”
“How’d you know, Dad?”
“Not only do I know, but my coworkers know, a couple of Windows engineers in New Jersey know, and the director in charge of Windows servers knows too!”
“Do they think you play video games at work?” my oldest son asked.
I said I hope not.
I proceeded to install Angry Birds Transformers on their tablets and made their day. Now it’s their favorite game. At least until Angry Birds Beavis and Butt-Head comes out.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.