I swear, I just wanted to keep everybody out of the kitchen while I was cooking Christmas dinner. There are a lot of things I could have done, including putting in a DVD or chasing people with a spatula if they sneaked pieces of my glazed ham.

But I chose to get my husband a Wii for Christmas.

I know nothing about video games. I may have played "Pong" with the kids when they were little, but that's it. So I put myself in the hands of Wal-Mart.

On Christmas, with the family gathered around, I handed Doug his "big" gift. I had the receipt upstairs, just in case. But I needn't have worried. "I got a Wii!" he cried, holding it up for all to see. "I got a Wii!"

Suddenly I could imagine him at age 6, receiving his first set of Lincoln Logs — instead of getting ready to retire later this year.

That evening, everyone tried to convince me to play Wii. "I don't play video games," I demurred, "and I'm not competitive at all."

Fast forward to New Year's Eve. We were home alone. "Come on," Doug pleaded for the thousandth time. He was tired of playing for both baseball teams. I agreed ... reluctantly.

"Only for a few minutes," I said. "I don't like video games or competition."

By now, Doug was an expert with the controller and nunchuk. But during the tutorial, I proved that I didn't know my right from my left. I managed to create a Mii — that's a "me" — to play with Doug's Mii. "Pick a game," he offered.

"I'm not very competitive," I reminded him, looking down the list, "so playing with me won't be much of a challenge."

Bowling ... table tennis ... boxing?

"Boxing!" I decided. Not that I'm very competitive, you understand.

We stood between the couch and the coffee table. Game one, round one: my Mii was down for the count. Round two: I got up after a count of five, which was an improvement, I guess. Round three? My Mii doesn't even remember round three. Final score, all three rounds to Doug.

"You feel big, beating up on a girl?" I asked petulantly. All my years as a martial artist, I thought, and I'm just a palooka. "Two out of three," I said.

The less said about game two, the better.

In game three, the first two rounds went to Doug — but the last one was a draw. Now we were getting somewhere. Doug put his controller down.

"Oh, no!" I said. "Not just when I'm getting the hang of it." We moved the coffee table out of the way.

Game four: round one went to me. We were both leaning over with our hands on our knees, breathing heavily, and Doug wanted to quit again.

"Put 'em up!" I ordered.

In game five, I took two rounds. "In your face!" I yelled, arms raised, dancing around like Muhammad Ali after he'd won the heavyweight championship (or whatever). By now we'd been playing for over an hour; Doug begged to quit on grounds of exhaustion.

"What happened to that non-competitive woman who had no interest in video games?" he wheezed.

"She got knocked out in the first round," I said.

"Now you have to deal with Mii!"

Cathy Drinkwater Better writes from Eldersburg. E-mail her at cbetter@juno.com.

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