What to get for the boy

These are my parameters:

I could take the high road and get the boy what his mom wants for him, something educationally rewarding. I have been examining Microsoft Creative Writer and Davidson's Mega Math Blaster.

I could take the middle road and get something that seems fun to me. I am thinking of Kai's Power Goo from MetaTools, a kind of virtual silly putty.

Or I could take the road to hell, which leads to a blood-and-guts 3-D adventure dungeon. The one I have access to is called SkyNet, from Bethesda Softworks.

Creative Writer is a fun product that aims to be a front door to writing for young people. You can use it to write just about any known form -- letters, cards, newsletters, stories or book reports. It's a great way for kids to immerse themselves instantly in writing, without coping with Windows' adult File/New procedure or boring outline structures. It allows you to make zany blinking pink and polka dot headlines, if that's your taste. You can even upload your documents to your own kiddie home page. The boy in our house is as reluctant to put pen to paper as any. It would be a good present.

Mega Math Blaster is a continuation of the revered Math Blaster tradition. It pits kids against extraterrestrial foes, with only their arithmetical skills to protect them. The original program fit on a 5¼" floppy. This version is two CDs in size, one for kids, and the other a virtual library for math-minded parents. I could give one disk to the boy and the other to the mother.

Now, I like Kai's Power Goo. It is a photo distortion utility that lets you tweak noses, pinch ears, and make eyes as big as saucers on any digitized photo -- JPG, GIF, Kodak CD, anything. You can even make movies of the transformation that are like the morph animations that were popular a year ago. Power Goo is frighteningly easy to use. I can imagine the boy entertaining his friends meaninglessly but hilariously on many a rainy day.

Which brings us to the dark side. Ask the boy what he would like most in the world and his answer is Doom. Think about that for a moment. It is his list-topper. His friends' parents all let their kids have Doom; why not us?

So I acquired a demo of a Doom-like role-playing game called SkyNet. It is true 3-D, not the awkward perspective games served up a few years ago. It might be a few red cells short of Doom, but it is still a horror show. The plot involves a Terminator in the apocalyptic future. The package promises, "This time you won't be going in alone. You can join up and kill everything and everyone in the ultimate multiplayer deathmatch." Though the story takes place in a variety of locales, the unifying aspect of all of them is that in each one, you are under continuous hostile, unbelievably violent challenge. I played it for about 15 minutes, then had to hose the gore off my hands.

What was I to do? A part of me really wanted to give the boy what he asked for, as a sign of respect to him: a teenage game. Those cool 8-year-olds whose company he coveted -- maybe they'd look up to him now. And seriously, I didn't suppose the carnage and havoc would permanently alter his character. I mean, he was into carnage and havoc when he was two.

I was struggling with this choice, and decided I would let him help make it. I loaded the game onto his computer, and he and as he and his excited friend sat down to play -- two boys astraddle one chair -- I withdrew, wondering if I had seen the last of my innocent son.

After a while I peeked in on them to see how they were doing. They were both on their feet, watching a duck whiz by in a race car -- they had changed programs.

"Didn't you guys play SkyNet?" I asked.

The boy hung his head. "Yeah, we played it for a few minutes, but --" The other boy looked over at my boy, then down at his feet.

"It was too scary?" I offered, hoping to be helpful.

"Yeah!" they both said. "It's real dark," the boy said, "and people are always coming up and attacking you. It was kind of, uh --"

"Scary?" They nodded. Scary was definitely the word.

So they hated SkyNet. Fine with me, they could take it up again when they were older. Meantime, I was so happy, I bought the boy all three of the other programs.

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