Ants In My Pants Give Me The Heebie Jeebies

I searched for quite a while in the game aisle, looking for something Micah could play. There were so many choices. But I wanted just the right one. He doesn't always understand directions, so things like Candyland or Trouble would simply allow him to participate but he wouldn't really know why he was doing what he was doing.

Don't Break the Ice and Connect Four seem incredibly easy to understand, but they're still not quite right. I'm pretty sure Micah's goal in Don't Break the Ice would be to crash all the cubes through as fast as he could. While fun, it's not the point of the game. I want a game that he can play correctly, enjoy immensely, and not frustrate the rest of the family while playing it. And I know from watching him play Connect Four on iDevices that his goal is to fill the holes. Patterns and sequences are for losers. Fail.

He'd enjoy Operation immensely, and it would be so good for his fine motor skills, but that falls under the "frustrating the rest of the family" heading. He'd either not care he was buzzing like an alarm clock on hyperdrive, or would enjoy the sound and do it on purpose. Fail again.

And then I saw Ants In The Pants. It's everything I was looking for. The goal is to get the ants in first. There were no turns, no rules, no directions, nothing complicated at all. Flick the ants, fill the pants. That simple. Awesomeness.

So we played, Micah and I, flicking ants toward the large, upright pants. I'm here to testify that it's way harder than one would think. I mean, this is a game for preschoolers. Is the hidden agenda of the game to teach kids that life isn't easy, and pretty much nobody is a winner? Because seriously, you're lucky if one in every forty flicks scores an ant down a pantsleg. The other 39 flicks bounce off the pants and suspenders. And if that was actually the goal, to hit those thin strips, you know it would never happen. Ants fall short of the pants, and overshoot the pants. Ants fly off the table or clear across the room. I'm telling you, those ants have an aversion to jumping into pants. It's frustrating, is what it is.

Micah decided to make his own rules, and every now and again, when he thinks I'm not looking, that boy will just pick up an ant and drop it down a leg.

Maybe I should have gotten Connect Four. At least, in making up new rules, it still would have been fun. And way less frustrating.