eekoworld

Lola, who is a scarily advanced computer user, currently enjoys playing a game named "Eekoworld" which she discovered for herself on the PBS website. (The very spelling of the name upsets the Sober Husband, who is not an environmentalist. How he married me, a woman who has worked for the League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund, is beyond reckoning). The game is aimed at educating (or, as some husbands would have it, brainwashing) children about the environmental ramifications of various actions.

Recently Lola was playing Eekoworld on my laptop while I read the morning papers. The game prompted her to decide whether to drill for oil in a wildlife preserve or not. I felt like helping her out, as I think Eekoworld can be a bit over her four year-old head, and I said, "Say no!"

Lola looked at me with all the pity and condescension in the world. "But Mommy, it makes our houses more comf'table." She clicked "yes", and the Eekoworld narrator explained the consequences of her decision to open the pristine wildlife preserve up to the depredations of Exxon: although drilling gives us oil to heat our houses and make them more comfortable, it harms wildlife blahblahblah... "See, Mommy," Lola explained to her idiotic progenitor, "it makes our homes more comf'table."