Game of Ultimate Power

So my sister’s kids – who range in age from five to 10 -- ask me to play this game where they’re super heroes and I’m an evil monster trying to destroy the universe and reap Ultimate Power. I love to oblige, although once I ended up in the ER after playing this game on a family vacation, wrenching my neck and succumbing to a migraine. Those hurt. The Ultimate Power game has also landed me in the chiropractor’s office.

Earlier in the week, my two-year-old daughter, Belle, gets a letter from her cousin, Sophie, my sister’s eight-year-old daughter, that says: “Dear Isabella, I hope you’re growing well. When is your dad going to come and try to ‘kill’ us? Love, Sophie.” I’m like, “Hmm, I hope the FBI didn’t read that letter and get the wrong idea!”

So we’re playing Ultimate Power with a new rule: No Climbing or Grabbing the Evil Being and Sending Him to Certain Emergency Medical Care. I’m chasing my 10-year-old nephew, Lucas, who currently has the super power to make inanimate objects come to life and destroy me. I’m playing the role of the Velocior—a combination of a velociraptor and an evil warrior.

So I’m chasing Lucas--my arms are mimicking the Velocior’s jaws, and my wedding ring falls off into the bushes. (The ring gets loose in the winter because skin contracts in the cold.)

I convince the kids to help me search for the ring by promising that the kid who finds it will have certain Ultimate Power. Then my niece, Sophie, says, “We need a metal detector. I’ll go ask Dad.”

I could just hear what she would probably say inside: “Dad, do you have a metal detector?”

“Huh?”

“A metal detector. Uncle Chris lost his ring playing the Velocior.”

“Ah-huh. We don’t have a metal detector, but you can try using the flashlights.”

So Sophie comes out with flashlights, but it's still daylight. The search starts out as an exciting adventure for the kids, like something out of the movie Goonies.

Then after two minutes, Lucas says, “I don’t want to spend my whole day searching for some old ring.”

Luckily for me and my marriage, I found the ring a few minutes later. “My precious,” I say.

In the end, Lucas uses his super powers to bring a large tree to life, which of course "grabs" me (the Velocior) while his siblings pummel the Evil Being—me—to death and reap Ultimate Power.

I guess the moral is, the struggle for Ultimate Power is kinda fun when you don’t end up in the ER.