Life lessons from ‘Animal Crossing’

Annie is really into “Animal Crossing” these days. Her older sisters are not completely thrilled about this. When they are playing the game, I’ll frequently hear groans from other rooms. 

“Annie! What did you do?!” Or, “Annie! Did you chop down all the trees?” Or, “Annie! Were you in my house again? DON’T go in there!!”

As if it’s not hard enough to share a house with their 5-year-old sister, now they have to share a digital island. Turns out, neither place is big enough.

I don’t really know anything about “Animal Crossing.” When we first got the Nintendo Switch two Christmases ago, I went on the game and explored a bit. As far as I could tell, it was a bit like the “Sim City” I played in my youth minus the heavy focus on municipal zoning and plus talking animals. Your character is dropped on an island with not much more than a tent. Then, they must forge and hustle in order to establish themselves. I’m not sure what the goal is- to have a bigger house? A good selection of clothes? There’s a lot of gathering of things like pears or sand dollars or firewood and exchanging of these things for a  currency called “Bells” that you can then use to buy more and nicer things.

My analog life is already so full, I didn’t really see the point in trying to home make on a video game when I’ve been attempting to homemake all over reality for the past 15 years. I haven’t been back on the game, so my little tent sits abandoned, except for some random bugs. 

“People always ask about you,” Lily told me cryptically. 

“Huh?”

“Like the characters in the game wonder where you are.”

I guess it feels, what? Nice? To be missed by talking video game animals? What stage of the machine apocalypse are we in now? Lull the humans into complacency? 

But I digress (or is it regress?). Lately, Annie asked for help with the game. I told her I’d do what I could, but also, I had no idea what I was doing, what with the fact that I’m not real game-y. 

In the game, Annie’s avatar was chatting with a large chicken wearing what appeared to be a giant bucket on his head. All the animals talk in some unknownable language, but luckily, there’s captioning. But I guess only luckily if you know how to read. Which Annie is still working on. Annie needed me to read what the chicken was saying. The chicken wanted to play a card game. Annie’s avatar had the opportunity to win a jacket. We played the game and lost a few times. Eventually, we won an argyle sweater. 

“Watch me,” Annie instructed after saying goodbye to the chicken. So I snuggled in to watch her running around the island exploring this and that. 

“Can you go fishing?” I asked her.

“No, she can’t,” Lily chimed from the next room. “She needs a fishing pole and she can’t buy one because she has no money.”

“How do you get money?” I asked.

“You have to sell stuff,” Lily replied. “But SHE (said with much accusation) always wants to keep everything instead of selling it because she doesn’t know how to manage money.”

Right. 

Because she’s 5.

“Well, let’s try to make some money,” I told Annie.

Annie agreed and her character set off wandering the island. Periodically, she would stop and pick things up. Lily, who was now watching her play, too, would fuss at her. 

“Annie! Don’t sell Jovie’s surfboard!” she yelled when Annie stopped by the beach. “She put that there for decoration.”

So Annie reluctantly dropped the surfboard. 

“Why don’t you pick up some of those coconuts,” I suggested. “You could probably sell those.”

“Those aren’t coconuts!” Annie replied. “They’re squish balls.” Then she pocketed a few and went on her way.

“Oh! You could pick some of those flowers and sell them” I said, pointing out some roses in a wooded area.

Annie pocketed a few flowers (the avatars on “Animal Crossing” have pockets similar to Mary Poppins’ carpet bag. They can hold anything). Then she decided to take them back out, and stick one in her mouth. 

“Don’t you want to sell it?” I asked. But Annie ignored me, instead, running around eating pears and changing outfits every few seconds.

She came to what looked like a little outdoor cafe with a purple fence.

“Don’t do it, Annie!” Lily grumped.

Annie giggled, then proceeded to pick up a section of fence.” 

“Annie!” Lily shouted. “Jovie worked hard on that!”

Annnie picked it up again then put it back a few more times, giggling the whole time.

“Do you want to find more things to collect and sell?” I suggested.

So she jogged over to a garden. “Oh!” I said. “You could pick some of the veggies and we could sell them.”

Annie picked up what appeared to be a stalk of wheat, but instead of pocketing it, began munching on it.

“Don’t you want to sell it?” I asked.

“No. I want to eat it.”

Then she grabbed a sizable pumpkin and at that, too, like it was an apple. At this point, as I watched her little avatar house an entire pumpkin, I had a realization.

“Animal Crossing” is just teaching her capitalism. She’s just learning how to make money and spend it on bigger and better things. And I was just sitting there reinforcing the importance of all the commerce. 

But Annie wasn’t really buying it. For her, the fun of the game wasn’t amassing wealth and things, it was just about exploring a space and maybe sowing a little chaos along the way. 

“She’s an anarchist,” Lily said.

“Yeah. But sometimes that’s kind of awesome.”

Lily was dubious. Then she had a moment of self-reflection.

“Sometimes, when I watch her play, I feel like President Business. She messes things up and I just want to freeze it with the Kragle.”

President Business, for anyone not versed in the youth, is the villain in “The Lego Movie” – a controlling, power-mongering Lego purist who wants all Lego to be used as it was as it was originally intended per the instruction manual. On Taco Tuesday he planned to unleash the Kragle (i.e. super glue) and freeze all denizens of Bricksburg into their pre-prescribed positions forever. President Business’s foil is Emmet, a derpy, earnest, by-the-book construction worker. He’s always cheerful and optimistic, he believes in the goodness of people and always wants to do his best.

It does not surprise me at all that Lily, and her anxious, control-seeking little brain, relates to Lord Business. It bums me out. But I get it. At her age, I was a total Emmet. In fact, for most of my life I’ve been insistent on being hopeful in the face of all manners of less-than-happy times. But not so much these days.

Lately, I’ve become a President Business. Cantankerous and overly particular about the socks on the stairs and the random googly eyes on the kitchen floor. Every spill and stain. Every whine about dinner, and how it’s not the tastiest. Every argument about how annoying little sisters are. My teeth are always grinding. My brow furrowing. There’s constant tension in my jaw and across my back. The same lectures bubble up over and over from an overflowing cauldron of frustration. The one about cleaning up their shit. The one about everyone needing to expand their tastes when it comes to dinner. The one about walking the goddamn dog. 

It’s as if when I’m at home, all I can see are the crumbs and the dust and the dishes in the sink. Not the smiling faces. Not the giant magna-tile cat Annie just made. Not the folded laundry. 

Every day feels like a series of sprints from 5 a.m. until bedtime. There are no flat stretches and I’m not even a runner. Every day I want to Kragle their shoes to the shelf and their toys to correct bins. 

Years ago, my dream was to have a couple acres of land with a cozy old cottage-type house with a giant front porch and maybe the pitter patter of miniature pony hooves in the foyer. 

“Oh Lady Sugar Dumpling!” I’d exclaim with feigned annoyance. “How did you get in?”

I’d shoo the pony and the hen or two who’d followed her into the house out the front door. But not before snapping some pictures of her wearing items from the kids’ dress up bin.

“Girls!” I’d call up the stairs. “You need to make sure to close the door. Sugar Dumpling got in again!” Only, I wouldn’t really be shouting all that loud. And maybe I’d “accidentally” leave the door ajar every once and a while. Just for the shenanigans. 

That person- the one who celebrated minor chaos and whimsy- she feels like a memory. Someone I thought was the most me. Now I see her as being naive. Like she didn’t quite know how the real world operated. She seemed more carefree and maybe she was. I don’t remember a time when I was ever not busy. But the busy-ness of freelancing while managing preschoolers was so different than the mental and emotional intensity of being a middle school special education teacher while simultaneously raising a teen, tween, and kindergartner who does not stop talking. Like. Ever.

Work is exhausting. Home is exhausting. I’ve been saying this for years and years, I know. I know. But it’s only recently that I’ve become more aware of the toll this pace has had on my mental and emotional health. Probably my physical health, too, if I paid attention to that. It’s hard to put my finger on it. I just feel less. Less fun. Less nice. Less silly. Less optimistic. Less creative. I took all those parts of me for granted. Like they were an intrinsic part of my personality. Always and forever. Friends in high school once described me as a koala riding a golden retriever. And that felt right. Or at least it felt like that was the thing that was expected of me. So then that’s what I was. 

And now I’m less that. I’m more like an angry possum riding a geriatric cattle dog. Always nipping at everyone’s heels. Maybe sometimes pretending to be dead- or at least asleep- to avoid unwanted tasks. I’m not particularly cuddly. But so focused on productivity- ever the good little capitalist. 

I don’t want Lily to be a President Business. If anything, she should be a Unikitty (a character who reminded my nephews of me… at least the old me). She’s young and has such an acute sense of justice. She’s still fighting for the world that, at age, I used to think would come into being right around now. Maybe it’s inevitable that all middle-aged parents succumb to their inner Business. But not a 13 year old.

I told Lily, despite the fact that I had been encouraging Annie to buy into the “Animal Crossing” economy, that the way she played the game was actually kind of revolutionary. Instead of getting caught up in the bartering and buying and selling, she just sort of did whatever the hell she wanted. And if that meant 5 minutes removing and replacing the same section of fence, then so be it. If that meant not having a kitchen or bathroom in your house in favor of a dozen aquariums full of fish, the random magazine rack you were gifted and an office water cooler in the corner, who the hell cares? Not much about Annie’s “Animal Crossing” living arrangement made sense. But then, not much about how my regular life operates makes sense to me either. What are we all even doing? Why is Annie’s way of playing any less valid than Lily’s?

Her priorities are just different. 

“What are you going to do next?” I asked Annie while she played.

“I wanna go catch some bugs.”

“What do you want to do with them?”

“Just have them. Maybe as pets.”

Of course. Sure. Why not? Have all the bugs. 

I think my actual epiphany, after watching Annie play “Animal Crossing” is that right now, I feel like I’m fighting for my life. 

That somewhere at the center of this bog that is parenthood, marriage, career, and humaning, there is the actual me. Not the grim-faced taskmaster I present day to day. But someone else. The most essential.

Annie always checks in on her sister’s houses when she plays. She admires their decorations. Maybe sometimes messes with their things. But mostly, she just likes visiting their world without them telling her to go away.

“There’s a part about ‘Animal Crossing’ that’s really special,” Annie says. “It’s that we all get together and we’re fine with what other people want to do.”

That’s what watching Annie play helped me understand. That it’s better when we’re together in a place and people get to be themselves. Whatever version shows up that day. That is empowering. And freeing.

Maybe one day I’ll be less angry possum and more koala. Or maybe I will be something else entirely. Maybe I don’t need to label any of it. Maybe I can just let myself be.