Don’t get me wrong: I love our Wii.

But it does have a way of, erm, hurting people. And I don’t mean that in a HAL kind of way (remember 2001: A Space Odyssey?). The Wii itself is clearly peaceful…but, you know, “the Wii doesn’t hurt people, people wielding Wii-motes hurt people”.

Here’s our injury list to date, after owning the thing for a paltry 15 days:

• Many, many pulled and sore muscles (in the adult population, to be fair): forearms, shoulders, hips, hamstrings and wrists, mostly. Hey Nintendo…instead of bowling and tennis, how about Wii yoga?
• Several cases of dignity. Mine mostly. Girl2 (who is only 4.5) beats me (by knockout no less) every. single. time we play boxing. Husband says, “you know I’m going to beat you” when we pair up for tennis. The whole family tries to conceal their laughter when I tee off for golf. Sheesh.
• A friendship – temporarily. Girl1 needs to learn that she shouldn’t gloat quite so hard when she wins. Eventually one of the friends she invites over will have played Wii before and she won’t always have the advantage over the newbies.
• A shoulder. Girl1 got a wicked bruise (one of those swollen, instantaneous ones) after being whacked in the right shoulder by a Wii-mote wielding friend. Ouch!
• A skull. Girl2 got a right old goose-egg after being clobbered in the noggin by another Wii-mote wielding friend. As soon as I got both girls to stop crying, the friend stood up to try her tennis serve again, and came within a millimetre of clocking her on the other side of the forehead! And man! That girl can whip a Wii-mote at speeds approaching the sound barrier.

I used to think the rule: “thou shalt sit on the couch and not leave it whilst spectating” would protect observers from being Wii-whacked, in addition to reminding all users that, just like in gym class, you have to pinwheel your arms before playing – if you touch anyone…you’re too close!

But noooo!

Honestly: I so don’t want to have to restrict Wii play to times when adult supervision is available, because really: short of having my fingernails removed by pliers (oooh…bad visual of George Clooney in Syriana…brilliant, but ouch!) there’s not much I’d rather not do more than sit in a room of little kids and adjudicate the Wii.

Having said all that; now that the kids are asleep, I think I’ll go downstairs and play Zelda on the Wii for a while – I still need to master the sword spin.