It All Started with Tennis

Ken the Zombie/Mummy

I play a lot of video games. Once I beat the games, I typically trade them in at a local shop for store credit to purchase new video games. As it turns out, I traded in a bunch of games the other day and wound up getting three new(ish) games in their place. One of the games I picked up was Sega Superstars Tennis, which features characters like Sonic the Hedgehog and AiAi the monkey from Super Monkey Ball – all playing tennis in fantastical settings.

I know. You’re all, “What does this have to do with the photo above?” Right???

Here’s why I’m telling you this junk. Sega Superstars Tennis isn’t just matchplay tennis gaming. Oh no, it’s so much more than that. There are scads of mini-games to play. One of our favorites so far is their version of Night of the Living Dead meets Space Invaders – where you have to hit tennis balls at zombies. Gretchen kept asking me what the monsters were and I kept saying they were zombies. She then kept calling them mummies. I paused the game and explained, “Zombies, child. NOT mummies! Zombies eat brains, mummies don’t.”

“So which ones are the mummies?”

“There are NO mummies in this game. ONLY zombies! Z-O-M-B-I-E-S…”

“And what do zombies do?” Gretch asked.

“They slowly walk towards you and, if they catch you, eat your brains.”

“Why?”  Un-huh. Anyone here NOT see this question coming?

“Because,” I answered, “that’s the way George Romero wrote it. Zombies can’t run and they eat brains.”

“Then what?”

“Then what what???“

“What do they do after they eat your brain?”

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“I don’t know. Look for more brains to eat, I guess.”

Gretchen, who clearly thought she was getting a handle on this concept, stated, “And they’re wrapped up in toilet paper!”

“Nope. That’s mummies – except that would be old bandages and *not* toilet paper. Zombies – brains. Mummies – bandages.”

You guys are starting to get closer to understanding the photo now, aren’t you?

Tonight, I was cleaning up the kitchen while my wife was researching something on the internet. Gretchen, on the other hand, was notoriously quiet. Too quiet. I said as much to Ashlee.

“Gretchen is being notoriously quiet, don’t you think?”

“Umm, yup.”

“A little too quiet, don’t you think?” I furthered.

My wife actually noticed at that point in our conversation that she could hear me without any interruption and decided to go investigate. She found our daughter playing in her bedroom. Gretchen heard Ash’s entry into her room and quickly flopped her pillow down on her bed. Ashlee started laughing a moment later and called me back, which is when I found Gretchen had turned Ken into a mummy-zombie hybrid. (see photo above) She called him Ken the Mummy, whose diet consists of brains. I tried to distinguish the two for her again, but was thwarted with the ever-practiced first grader parental-shutdown-response “WhatEVER, Da-ad!”

I couldn’t help but notice that she did manage to properly strip Ken before converting him into her Mumbie. So, her execution is correct, but form and identification is something that will need to be dealt with in a future Monsters 101 course.