Now boys, you know Grandpa is getting up there, but he still finds the time to come around the house every now and then to check in on his grandkids. And it’s not nice of you to call him “weird” before he comes, or make jokes about the way he smells, or try to hide his cigarettes…Although if it keeps him from bitching about not smoking in our den… Alright, Alice, nevermind, nevermind.

Anyway, the point is, when he came over this weekend, it’s not bad enough that you couldn’t pull yourself away from the Xbox for two hours to talk to him. He walked into that room and you kept bleep-blooping away, with him standing there waiting for the two joys of his life to get up and talk to him.

Finally, he realizes the way it’s going to be, shows a little interest in what you’re doing, and what do you say? “Oh, Grandpa. It’s just some World War II bullshit.” First of all, that’s not appropriate language. No, I don’t care whether or not I say it, it’s not appropriate for boys your age. No, not even on Xbox Live.

And then, you don’t even get the message when he starts in on one of his “World War II? Well, the stories I could tell you, boys, they sure were something else” rants. You just keep on clicking away on those damn controllers. And then, one of you gets the bright idea to tell him how the game works?! You haven’t talked to your Grandpa for more than 5 minutes in your whole lives, and all of a sudden you give him this?

Because I don’t know quite what you were thinking when you thought you’d show him how cool it was to be a Japanese dogfighter, and spiral a plane down into the American encampment. Or when you told him, “Oh, don’t worry, we’re leading, so we’ll respawn quicker. As long as we control more of the points on the map, we’re basically invincible.”

I don’t know if that’s what sent him over the edge, or when you killed seven Americans on the other squad with headshots, laughing the whole time, and then ran out of ammo. When he started cackling, saying, “You fucking Jap kids are fucked now, ain’tcha?”, though, it probably wasn’t the best idea to remind him that you’re never really out of ammo in that game, and that in mere seconds your weaponry had recharged to full, just in time to take out another wave of soldiers with names like “SpunkL0rd 6969” and “DonkEE PunchEEr”.

I don’t want to blame all of this on you. It was out of bounds for Grandpa to take that shish-kebab off the grill and chase you around with a burning red pepper, or for him to topple over the grill, hide behind it, and launch fiery coals at your “positions”. But maybe you should be a little more careful next time about what you tell Grandpa.

And seriously, when the doctors were pulling him away in the ambulette, did you think it was a bright idea to still be talking about how cool it would be when just by killing a few million more Allied troops, you’d unlock another map? Because that was just a bit too far, even for me. Next time, maybe you should stick to Modern Warfare 2… Grandpa still hates those Russkies.