by Lorri Horn
Archie ran away laughing and recovered his grip to shoot Dewey back. It began to rain again, but they didn’t care. They were already getting all wet. Dewey ran around behind the play structure and climbed up the slide so he could shoot down at Archie. Archie laughed and shot back up. Dewey slid down the slide and got his pants all wet.
“That was a bad idea!” he laughed, looking at his wet bottom.
“Should we go in now?” Archie asked.
“Yeah,” Dewey said. “As soon as I—” and Dewey opened the cover on his Chewbacca Bowcaster and poured the rest of the water on Archie’s head.
Archie laughed and took off, chasing Dewey again. Archie dropped his nerf gun and grabbed a watering can that had filled with rain water. Lucky for Dewey it was heavy, and slowed Archie down enough for Dewey to escape back up to the top of the play structure.
“Truce?” Dewey smiled and flashed his teeth at Archie as the latter stood below wielding the watering can. The rain began to really come down hard now and Archie’s face looked like the wet windshield of a car that needed to turn on its wipers.
“Truce!” Archie laughed, putting down the watering can.
Dewey, now completely drenched, slid down the slide because you can’t get more wet than wet.
They headed back to the house. Dewey’s hair was plastered to his head like spaghetti drained in a colander, and Archie’s shirt stuck to the skin of his back. As they approached the door, Archie’s mom spotted them.
“Whoa! Hang on there, Wild Bill and Jesse. We gotta clean you up a bit.”
‘A bit?!’ thought Dewey as they dripped water all over the floor.
“Stay right where you are, please.”
“Jesse?” Dewey whispered to Archie.
“James. You know Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok. Some famous gun guys.”
“Ohhh,” Dewey said, nodding.
As he looked down at himself and Wild Bill he had to admit, it was impressive that she didn’t seem in the least bit upset. His mom would have thrown a fit.
Archie’s mom came out with four big towels, and some extra clothes.
“Dry off and change. I’ll make you some warm cocoa. Dewey, you can borrow some of Archie’s clothes. I think these will fit. Hose off your feet outside, fellas.”
Even though they were already wet, the water felt cold and miserable, and Dewey began to shiver.
They went to separate quarters to change, and when Dewey came out, a new smell hit his nose. Popcorn. He was feeling kind of peckish about now, and a warm cup of hot cocoa sounded like it would hit the spot.
“Hey! Are those M&Ms in there?”
Archie’s mom had heated them up into the popcorn. That was pretty much the beginning of the end for him. Dewey didn’t care if he never played another video game on a weekday ever again. He was moving in.
The salted popcorn and the warm melty chocolate inside of the candy shell of the M&Ms made Dewey feel a kind of comfort inside, kind of like an old friend coming to visit again.
Dewey decided to just go for it.
“Mrs. Thomas? How come you don’t want your kids to have electronics on weekdays?” he finally decided to just ask. He’d been expecting Archie’s mom to be some sort of psycho, but she seemed normal, super nice even. Maybe a direct approach would give him the information he needed.
Archie shot him a look that said—OH YOU DIDN’T?!
Just then Archie’s sister Angelica came in the front door.
“Dry off and come join us in the kitchen,” their mom said.
“Oh! Popcorn!” She grabbed a handful and put it into her mouth.
“Good day?” their mom asked.
“Yeah, okay.”
Mrs. Thomas began to clear the table and as her back turned, Angelica flicked Archie on the back of the neck.
“Ouch! Why’d you do that?”
“What?” she smiled, already on the other side of the table sitting when her mother turned around.
“Grr,” Archie growled.
“Archie?” Mrs. Thomas asked.
“Nothing,” he moped.
Angelica threw some more popcorn into her mouth and munched.
“To answer your question, Dewey,” Mrs. Thomas continued, “it’s pretty simple.”
Archie slid down in his seat.
“Do you know what the gray matter area of your brain is, Dewey?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, it’s where you process things.”
Dewey nodded. He was using his brain matter now. Yes, he sure was.
“Multiple studies show that there is a loss of tissue volume with video gaming. It gets smaller. Do you understand? Where there is Internet and gaming addiction going on, YOUR BRAIN SHRINKS. Do you want to know, Dewey,” she continued, “where they have found this shrinkage?”
Dewey shook his head ‘no.’ Then realized he meant yes. He did want to know. “Yes, I mean yes. Where?”
“In the frontal lobe which has to do with your planning, organizing, and how well you and Archie here can control your impulses. But that’s not all, is it, Archie?”
Archie sighed, putting his head down into his folded arms on the table.
“No, it also shrunk in the striatum. The striatum controls your socially unacceptable impulses. Do you know what that means?”
“I think so,” Dewey said. “That means I don’t put my feet on your kitchen table?”
“Or that I don’t fart at yours,” Archie said, lifting his head up and laughing a little.
She laughed. “That’s true, too.” At least she still had a sense of humor, Archie thought.
“Studies also showed,” she continued, “that Internet and gaming addictions damaged the area of the brain that controls your ability to have empathy and compassion.” She took a breath.
“Wow,” Dewey said.
“I’m not done,” she said sitting back down at the table. “That’s just the gray matter. There are concerns about what studies show happens to the white matter, reduced cortical thickness . . . Dewey, do you want reduced cortical thickness?”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Bad! It’s associated with doing poorly on tasks.”
“Oh. No, then. I’ll stay thick.”
Archie dropped his forehead back down in the palm of his hand.
“And it’s not just brain atrophy. Studies show video gaming makes you lazy, overweight—”
“I think he’s got it, Mom.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Thomas. This has been very informative. What time is it? I probably better get going now before it gets raining again.”
“Oh, look at the time. It has been lovely having you, Dewey. I’ll call your dad to pick you up soon. Why don’t you boys go up to Archie’s room until he gets here.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Thomas.”
“Anytime, Dewey. Anytime.”
“What are those clothes?” his dad asked when Dewey got in the car.
Funny—even though he carried a bag of his wet clothes, he’d forgotten he had on Archie’s.
“Oh! Right. Amazing Nerf war. Got totally soaked.”
“The rain?”
“No, mostly water guns. Awesome!”
“Well, good! Glad you had fun. This a new kid? You’ve never mentioned him before.”
“No. I mean yes, all sixth graders are new. He didn’t go to our elementary, too, though.”
“I see. Well, great that you’re making some new friends.”
“Yeah,” Dewey said, but his thoughts were already somewhere else, thinking about what Archie’s mom had said and needing to unwind from his long day. He pulled out his phone, which had been on silent in his backpack at Archie’s house, to see if he’d missed anything. Nope. So he loaded up Clash of Clans and began to play.
“Um, what ya doing back there?” They had a long-standing no phone in the car rule, except on long trips.
“Aw, Dad. I haven’t bee
n on all day. I just wanna check on my troops. I’ll lose my base if I stop now.”
“Okay, finish this round and then put it away, please.”
Funny, Dewey thought, how every family had its own rules. He could play it once at home but not in the car. Why?
When he finished his round, he asked, “How come I can’t play on my phone in the car?”
“There’s a world going by, Dewey. You’ll miss it! There’s a dad in front of you with scintillating conversation!”
“Not really,” Dewey said. “I just stare out the window and do nothing.”
“That’s something, son. That’s something.”
Back Up Brain
Dewey sat in his office, trying to piece together his visit with Archie and map out a plan of action.
“I wasn’t expecting his mom to be nice,” Dewey told Clara. “And we had an awesome time. I totally wasn’t expecting that, either.”
“So, what’s the sticking point?”
“Her brain is obsessed about his brain getting ruined by video games. She’s got this whole thing about your brain shrinking by playing too much, and it making you do stupid stuff, or how it makes you lazy, or fat! But I know tons of kids who play all the time. I play during the week. Colin plays loads! Well, it’s true, he’s kind of a nutjob,” Dewey said, laughing.
“So?”
“So, so, something isn’t adding up.”
Dewey went to the computer and looked up ‘video game addiction,’ ‘video games damage brain,’ and ‘video games children obesity.’
“Umm,” reported Dewey after about an hour of reading and a plateful of Clara’s chocolate sandwich cookies. “Clara, I’m discombobulated.”
What’s wrong, Sir?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. She’s not.”
“Not wrong?”
“Right.”
“She’s right?”
“Right. She’s not wrong. Clara!” Why was she getting so confused at this, perhaps possibly the most terrible news of his career? Not only was he going to let Archie down, his own brain might be shrinking. “I’m saying the studies do show some stuff.”
“Like what?” Clara asked, rolling her chair up to Dewey’s desk to get a closer look. Wolfie had been sleeping on her lap and jumped off, disturbed by her movement. He shook his whole body as if to shake the sleep off himself and drifted off to the corner to try and find it again.
“Well, all that brain stuff I guess is true. There are lots of articles and stuff that support what she’s saying.
“That’s good to know. Have you tried researching to see if there are counter-positions?”
“Good! Good idea.”
“Always a good idea.” Clara smiled and patted him on the head.
Dewey hunkered back down.
“Clara,” he said when he came back up for air, “get a load of this. Did you know they did a study that shows that motion-controlled video games help with real world competition?!”
“That’s the way, sir.”
He went back under for more.
“Oh! Mrs. Thomas should read this article about how game controllers have changed over time and are used in the real world! The U.S. Navy is using a controller like the one we use in real life. Oh! Oh! In case she doesn’t like real war stuff, look! They use the X-box controller for MRI and CAT scans for medical stuff at one company because it works so well. They said it helps the surgeons prepare for the surgery!”
Dewey read on and on. The more he read, the more he found some articles that supported and others that contradicted Mrs. Thomas’ position. His head began to swim and his eyes to blur.
He put his feet, which were up on the desk, on the ground. The feeling of the ground under his feet helped to steady him. He sat up, took in a breath and let it out.
“Maybe this article in the journal Pediatrics can help,” he said hopefully. “It seems to say a little of both, I think. According to them, it’s only a problem for kids who are . . . ‘problematic video gamers.’”
“Go on . . .”
“We only have a problem, if we, I mean, Archie, answers yes to ALL of these questions:
I have been unsuccessful in cutting back.
I experience an irresistible urge to play.
I experience tension that is only relieved by playing.
“Do you think he’ll be able to answer no to any of them?”
“I think so. He seems fine to me. Just a normal kid. Plus, there’s a lot of fun stuff to do at his house. And good snacks!”
“I think you’re onto something, sir.”
Dewey let out a big sigh.
“I’m getting hungry.” He looked at the time on his computer screen. It was almost dinner.
“This has been a productive afternoon!” Dewey said, pleased now that he’d come out on the other side of it with all he had discovered. He just had to figure out his next steps.
“What are your next steps?”
How did she always do that? Know what he was thinking? But Dewey’s head was full and his stomach was empty. The energy from the cookies had burnt off long ago.
“Don’t know. My brain hurts from thinking so much. I think my cortical thickness is reduced,” he laughed.
“Why don’t you go down to dinner, and Wolfie and I will give it some more thought.”
“Okay, that’s good. Thanks, Clara.” He gave her a sleepy half hug, patting her back, and then walked over and distractedly pat Wolfie on his haunches.
As Dewey climbed out through the air ducts, his tired mind felt far away. He still had homework to do after dinner. It occurred to him what a wonderful thing it was to have a whole second brain, full of plump gray matter working on this for him. Clara was like having a back-up brain. When his got too full or tired, her back-up mind kicked in. He let out a breath that he didn’t realize he’d been holding and made an audible sigh.
The smell of dinner hit his nose almost as quickly as Pooh wrapped herself around his leg when he walked through the door.
“Hey, Pooh!” he pat her on the head. She greeted him, pretending to be a dog excited to see him at the end of the day. “Good boy,” he said going along with her game. She panted.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Arf!”
“Go fetch!” he said, throwing a pretend bone.
He walked in the kitchen, where the warm smells of dinner welcomed him.
“Oh, good, Dewey! Dinner is almost ready. Hungry?” his mom asked.
“Starving.”
How Does Your
Garden Grow?
The rain had stopped but the tables and grass outside were still sopping wet, so Dewey and his friends stood around the garden eating their lunch.
“Well, the garden got some water,” Seraphina said. “That’s good!”
“Good thing it didn’t rain like that when we had all of Clara’s cookies in there,” laughed Colin. “That would have been a disaster.”
With that remark, the cat was pretty much out of the bag, so they proceeded to tell Elinor all about last semester and how they had “planted” cookies, chips, and all sorts of snacks in the garden to protest the school administration’s removal of their vending machines.
“It was beautiful,” Colin said.
“Sure was,” Dewey agreed.
“Here,” Seraphina said, digging her phone out of her pocket. “I have some pictures.”
Elinor mouth dropped open. “You guys did all that?!”
“We did, and it worked. We got our vending machines back.”
“Nice!” nodded Elinor, scrolling through the pictures. “Oh! Ha! He’s huge! Who’s that?”
“Oh, that’s my dog!”
“Peewee!” laughed Dewey.
Just then Mr. Peters walked by. “Yo, Johnson. Phone away or it’s mine.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry,” she stuffed it back into her pocket. “I don’t really get the harm in looking at s
ome pictures,” she said once he walked out of earshot.
“Me, neither. They should see what’s going on with those iPads in the lab,” Dewey said.
“Why? What’s going on there?” Colin asked.
“Minecraft, for one thing.”
“Oh! I gotta get in on that!”
“I know. We haven’t played for so long. Why’d we stop?”
“I don’t know. Our base’s just sitting there. We should go back to it.”
“Let’s go see if anything’s growing in there,” Seraphina said, pointing her chin toward the garden.
The ground was dark and moist from the rains, and water still clung onto the green leaves of the arugula and spinach like little glass domes. Before a raindrop ever hits a leaf, water molecules, high in the clouds above, bond together in their small globular world. As they make their journey to earth, the bonded molecules sometimes bump into other downward-drops and envelop them into their own microcosms. Colin, Dewey, and Seraphina, thick as thieves, with Elinor now part of their spherical little community, made their way through the muddy garden.
“The peas are starting to have pods!” Seraphina pointed to the trellises.
Colin tore off a piece of something green to taste it and spat it out. “Ach! It’s bitter!”
“Ha! Mustard plant? Chard? Who told you to stick it in your mouth?”
“It looked good.”
“It is good. . .mixed in a salad.”
Elinor crouched amid a bunch of parsley-like greens and, wiping the dirt, exposed what looked like a bunch of orange coins. “The carrots are starting to come up.”
“Cool! Let me see! Ugh. I have mud all over the bottom of my shoes,” Colin said.
They all lifted a foot to see about an inch-thick clod of mud.
“Oops,” Dewey said.
“Glad I wore my dark Vans,” Elinor said.
Just then, of course, the bell rang.
“Take the field,” Colin suggested. “We can drag our feet on the grass as we go.”
That proved a bad idea, though, as the only thing muddier than the garden was the field.
“Oh boy,” Dewey said.
“Oh boy,” the others agreed.
Before tracking all that mud into his classroom, Dewey’s science teacher stopped him at the door.