It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. - e.e. cummings

Before I get started, please note that I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an expert on video games. Not what they are, or how to play them...anything related to them. When it comes to video games, I am like Helen Keller behind the wheel of a racecar. Fun to watch, but a personal disaster.

In watching a short documentary on the man who created video games, I was reminded of the time I had the chance to play The Sims 3. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a game where you create people and then live their lives. It sounds easy enough. I live life every day. Sign me up! I was ready to live the shit out of that fake life!

I created my character and named him Bill Cosby. I made him a black, charismatic bookworm with mucho cooking ablities (in a Sims game several years ago, my Sims character died in a house fire from a cooking accident. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.) I got him a job at a hospital (hmmm). After working for a bit, he had enough money for a TV.

Then it all became...the same.

The days went by like this: He woke up, made breakfast, went to work, came home, had dinner, watched TV, took a bath, went to bed. Repeat the next day. Then repeat again. And repeat AGAIN. By Wednesday (in game time), it hit me that I was playing a video game that mimicked my own life. The only difference is that I don't work in a hospital and I'm not a middle-aged black man.

Here I was, given the chance to be a Pseudo God and go hog wild with anything I'd ever want to do in a fake world, and I fell right back into my own life structure. I was like Michael Jackson - by the time he died, he was imitating a white woman, but not very well. Put me behind the wheel of a Sims game, and I become a black man...poorly, or at least, very boring.

I think that should have been my big wake up call - so tomorrow, I've got a plan. I'm waking up, going to work but I'm quitting my job. Then I'm packing up my stuff and moving out to Los Angeles where I can get the job of my dreams - doing hot dog commercials. I'll make tons of money and retire young.

Laugh all you want. When you see me holding a big beefy dog in one hand, and raking in all my money with the other hand, we'll see who's laughing.