Lavender Town (Internet Part 2)

So the other day Nick asked me to look up "Lavender Town" on the internet.

Go ahead. Look it up. It will save me the time and energy of explaining. It will save me from figuring out how to explain this... thing.

OK, fine, I'll just start type-talking.

Nick's friend on the bus (see previous post) told him about this thing in this one Pokemon video game. Apparently there is this one part, the friend said, where you end up in a graveyard and there is all sorts of scary screechy music. And all of the pokemon there are dead! And you have to battle this one really scary pokemon who is also dead. And it's scary. And, according to Nick, you heard this from his friend, it gives kids really bad headaches and nightmares and stuff.

I told Nick his friend might be confused. I remembered some episodes of Pokemon, the TV show, which used a lot of flashing, and a few kids in Japan were had seizures. It was a thing for awhile. Maybe his friend was confused?

No, it was this town in this game.

I went ahead and looked it up. We listened to some bad, high pitched music. We watched a clip of someone actually playing the video game - apparently there is some hidden level where you do actually battle a very hard pokemon who keeps threatening to take your soul.

And then I read some of the stuff that was written, and apparently there was some rumor going around that, after playing this game, a number of children, ages 10 to teens, actually committed suicide.

Which is when I turned it off. I wasn't afraid my kids were going to suddenly want to end their lives, like some strange version of "The Ring" brought to life. No, I was just so angry about the whole perpetuation of stupid rumors, and video games screeching... And why does Nick have to hear a stupid twisted rumor like that? How do you even try to address it. I said it was time for something besides video games.

I was less happy when Andy, who had overheard all of this, had bad dreams at night and climbed into my bed. Because he then decided to sleep sideways and kicked me in the ribs all night long.

I hate video games. I hate the internet.