You have died of dysentery

Alternate post title: Perhaps I should have put a little more thought into the implications of naming my wagon train children after my real ones.

Levi and Noah discovered yesterday that I downloaded Oregon Trail for my phone, and were dying to play it.

We set up the game with all our real names. Except Luke, because there aren't enough characters.

First question: How come Luke doesn't get to come?

Well, I guess he is too young to survive the trip, so he will have to stay home.

Not too far down the road, Ella broke her arm. The game gives you three choices: Keep going, stop, or find help.

From the kitchen, Paige calls out "Awwwww, keep going!"

Ella promptly died a few miles down the trail. This literally reduced her to tears, crying at her mother "You killed me mom!!!"

Like I said, perhaps I should have thought through naming my wagon train children after my real ones.

A few miles down the road, Noah came down with cholera and Levi got dysentery. Should we keep going, stop, or get help? "STOOOOOOOOOOPPPPP, DAD!!!!" they both yelled. "I don't want to die!"

We stopped, and they recovered. They then kept telling us the rest of the day... "Mom. Mom! I got cholera, but Dad stopped and I got better in 3 days!"

Then my wagon wife Paige broke her leg. We kept going.

A few hours later, after we stopped playing the game, one of the kids asked quietly (having obviously given this some thought): "Dad, when Mom broke her leg and you wouldn't stop... were you trying to kill her?"

Yup, more food for us, and less stress on the wagon, kiddo.

Levi got carried away by and eagle later, and it took us two days to find him. He thought that was fairly exciting.

I finished the game later the next day. Levi got separated from the wagon train. I figured after the eagle incident, he was on his own. Unfortunately he disappeared. Paige actually did survive her broken leg, but then broke her arm. She died too, after walking some 200 odd miles with that broken arm. Tough old broad! Noah broke his arm as well, but somehow made it the last couple hundred miles to Oregon.

Let's hope they clearly explain in school tomorrow that they were just playing a game, and didn't really get cholera over the weekend...