It seems, too often, I find myself grumbling about the jerk on the highway or the kid who seems to have no respect or care for anyone but himself. Even if people are not being outright rude, it still seems that - more often than not - we are enveloped in our own little worlds. We may take the effort to smile or say good morning, but are too busy to stop. Today I was astonished to find that nice people really do exist.
I was leaving Target, pushing a full and heavy cart with one hand and carrying sleeping Izzy in the other arm when something fell off the bottom of the cart in the parking lot. I do this all the time and I manage. I could have managed today. I could have put Izzy down for a moment and gathered up the items, put them back in the cart, and continued to the car - never feeling like someone should help. But today, a beautiful fall morning, Minnesota nice came at me with a vengeance. First a man picked up my things and put them in the cart. I thanked him and continued on my way. Then a woman heading into the store stopped and insisted that she help me with my cart. “You carry that darling baby and I will push.” I was stunned. She walked all the way to my car with me. She even offered to load the car, but I told her I could definitely manage from here and thanked her profusely. Still I am getting goosebumps from the unbelievable kindness that was offered to me.
To take a moment, a minute, to help me was amazing. That same effort I do see every once in a while. Someone who waits to hold a door for me when I am not quite there yet or allows me to pull out of the driveway when traffic is backed up. It is good and it is rare. But a stranger who offers multiple moments, stops and holds their needs to offer assistance, is something so precious as to be remembered and announced.
I try to be this person everyday. I know that the people I love try to do the same. But sometimes it seems the rest of the world just cannot be bothered. It takes so little effort to make such a big impression and improvement to someone else’s day. I think we should all resolve to keep our eyes and hearts open and maybe, just maybe, pass the habit on to everyone we touch.
If you haven’t heard of this game. Let me introduce you to the best ‘God Sim’ I’ve ever seen.
You start off as a small organism and you have to work your way up the food chain. As you progress, you have the ability to alter your evolution to start including new features. If you earn enough points you could add a new mouth, or the ability to swim faster, etc. As you evolve, you then come out of the ocean and become a land creature. (or you could fly) You progress to use tools and enter the tribal stage. This is where you learn the various social interactions. You earn points by being friends or killing your enemies. After you evolve some more, you enter into the civilization stage. Here you control multiple cities rather than a single creature. You learn to manage the growth of multiple ‘nations’. And lastly you evolve even more into the space age.
As you get into the game you start to realize that, this is a big game. And then it gets bigger! I found myself thinking ‘wow this cant get any better’. Then it does.
There is really two basic games. The ‘leveling up’ - which is the evolution part. And the ‘end game’ - which is the galactic part. The galaxy game alone could be a solid stand-alone game (thats how big it is). However, it incorporates all of the previous stages and the various aspects of them.
There is a ‘multiplayer’ component to Spore, but its asynchronis. As you create beings and worlds they get uploaded to the net and inserted into the larger pool. As you venture out into the galaxy you see all of the other creations from other players in your game. And there are THOUSANDS of them! Players aren’t controlling their creations in your game, the awesome AI does. The behaviors and aspects of each creation are inherited by the player that created them and appear in your game.
I really have to hand it to Will Wright. This tops every ’sim’ game out there.
Izzy gave me her first chuckle today while I was bouncing her on my lap. The video is posted on our YouTube page, but I will also include it on this blog:
Just wanted anyone who actually checks the blogs to know that I finally posted new pictures from March, April and May to the Picasa site… just click “gallery” on the menu bar at the top of this page
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