I just remembered this and have to share. Friday story time, I guess.
So, when my kids were younger they used to play a game called Scribblenauts on our iPad. It was a 2D puzzle game, and the cool thing about it was that it somehow could create an animated version of whatever you typed in. Type chainsaw, and voila, a chainsaw would appear.
Well, one day my kids were taking turns adding things to the sandbox (you can probably see where this is going), and my daughter had created a pond and a family of ducks. She was feeding them bread, and there were ducklings all over the place. Very cute.
When it was my son's turn, he took the iPad and said, "I wonder if they have Medusa?" and typed it in.
@jeffpalmer@genart.social
Now, it turns out that Scribblenauts included a whole host of monsters and other evil nasties in the game; just about anything you could think of was in there. (Seriously, at one point Cthulhu was summoned.) However, and importantly, none of us knew this at the time.
Of course, Medusa appeared in full form, snakes writhing on her head and eyes glowing. She immediately turned her attention to the ducklings. They didn't last more than a second. Zap, zap, zap. Stone ducklings everywhere.
Folks, it's hard to describe the ensuing chaos.
My daughter, who was probably five at the time and possessed an almost supernatural sense of empathy, absolutely lost her mind. She had just witnessed duckling murder, after all. I think our neighbors heard the screams.
On the other hand, my son immediately realized that not only had he accidentally "won", but he now had a whole new type of game to play. He laughed for like ten minutes straight.
Oh no!
My 5 year old is getting intro Scribblenauts but she doesn’t quite have that “what if” attitude (or broad knowledge of what could be available) yet.
