The horror! The horror!

So I was planning to write a nice post about how thankful I am for different wonderful things in my life: the husband, the dog, my family, my in-laws, my health, the fact that I have a job that let me afford my rock and roll lifestyle, etc. It was going to be happy and gooey, and I was going to get all teary-eyed while I wrote it. But then tragedy, in the form of job-related mental torture, struck.

Do you know what DDR is? Officially known as Dance Dance Revolution, it's a video game in which players dance along to horrible music (good music is available - but the kids today don't like good music) in order to earn points. For your edification, here is a link to a person in a lion suit playing DDR. Libraries use DDR and similar video games as an attempt to remain relevant in the lives of today's youth.

Apparently it works, because I spent an hour and a half yesterday with one of my fellow employees trapped in a room with 15 tweens and a few younger kids playing DDR. Our programming room does not have windows that can be opened and the kids were dressed for blustery winter weather, so within 20 minutes, the place smelled like a gym. And to be fair, they did play many songs that really aren't too bad. It's just that there are four songs that they really really like. These songs get played over and over and over and over. One of them is "Hey Mama" by the Black Eyed Peas, which I used to like, until I heard a 2-minute portion of it 20 times. There's one called "Butterfly" in which the woman sings in a very high-pitched voice, and the majority of the song is "aaahh-eee-aaahh-eee-iiiii" repeated over and over again to a techno beat.

For some reason, I am always the one to sit in on DDR. Always. Two adults have to be in the room due to village ordinance, and usually my partner in pain is a very nice woman who is in her 70s, and thus should really be exempt from this particular form of library fun. Today, it was someone close to my age, with twin toddlers at home. At one point, she turned to me and said, "I will never complain about the Wiggles again." So maybe that's how I'll tie this back into Thanksgiving: I am grateful for my lot in life. Because no matter what else happens, nothing in my home life is set to a pulsing techno beat.