Soccer moms and game buying

For those who don't know me, I work as an assistant manager of a local game store in RI, and honestly, I know the talking heads like Jack Thompson and the rest of the media like to look at violent games and blame them for societies' ills.  Myself and others, who have grown up playing, and had parents who cared about us went through the whole aspect that games were not real, violent movies were not real, that I couldn't go around in real life doing things I do in games.  Those days are long gone however, and sometimes you have some humourous results, like the story I am about to share with y'all.

A soccer mom walks into the store last week.  Now, I can tell this is going to be rough. She gets pissed when for her 4 years old crappy games she gets nothing in trade, as if we need another copy of Jak & Daxter anyway.  So she has her kid look at the games.  Her kid grabs Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.  Now, we all know what GTA is about.  I would never let my kid, who couldn't have been more than 10, to ever look at GTA.  So, I explain to the mother whats in the game.  I tell her you can kill people, uncluding cops, steal cars, do missions that involve illegal activites and there is bad language.  She didn't care, so I was like "OK" got the game and shook my head.

So, now a few days later, the mom is back with her kid, pissed as hell.  She wants a different game, as GTA is not approiate for her kid, not because of the language, the guns or the crime, but for the fact her kid killed a prostitue.  Yes, it is ok for little Timmy to play games in which he can run drugs, kill cops, steal cars, swear etc, but god forbid if he hurts a woman, its a sin.    Then on her way out, leaving the kid in the store for a few minutes, she tells us "He can buy M rated games, as long as there is no abusing woman, swears and anything else don't matter." 

I hate these talking heads who bash video games as much as anybody, but to tell you the truth after some of the situations like this which I have seen, sometimes these people need protection from themselves.  Sometimes when I try to tell a parent what a game is all about and they just buy the game anyway, its both funny and sad, funny because of how dumb parents can be, and sad because of how dumb parents can be.