Nothing rhymes with orange

Arlo hates Fruit Ninja. Granted, he appears to hate Temple Run more: last time I played it while lying in bed, he literally climbed on top on my chest and laid there until I put my phone down (I think it's the sound of the monkeys in pursuit that gets to him). Clearly, he doesn't understand why I play these games. Nor do I exactly. I never played video games as a kid, with the exception of an occasional game of Pong -- or, later, Space Invaders -- with my brothers. I didn't understand the appeal. And as they became increasingly violent, they appealed less. But there's something quite appealing in a video game about slicing fruit. Last summer, when my obsession began, one of my Irenes told me she had a friend who found that it helped her eat more fruit, as the juice that squirted out upon each wild slice made her crave it. (When I later repeated this story to her, she told me it wasn't a friend at all who made the claim but a writer in a fashion magazine.)

I started collecting a series of food-themed games for my phone: Cake Maker, Cupcake Maker, Pie Maker, Scoops (with choices of ice cream, hamburger, or cupcake towers), and Cut the Rope. My object was not to increase cravings, but to try to find an alternative, particularly given my already compromised sense of taste. My eight-year-old friend Miles discovered the slicing option on the Cake Maker game, and my nieces rock at cutting the rope to feed the lonely monster a piece of swirly candy, but Fruit Ninja is the only one that's really stuck to me.

It's commonplace for people to believe that as one loses a sense, the other senses become stronger. While I don't mean to debunk this belief, I think it needs some tempering. After all, our senses do adapt to such loss, but it takes a very long time for our brains to develop new pathways to allow for complex adaptation and intensive strengthening. So, whereas I immediately became more conscious of textures of food when I couldn't smell them, I would not suggest my eyesight or hearing has generally improved in some way to make up for my lack of olfaction and thus to help me survive in the wilds of the modern world. Except maybe in the case of Fruit Ninja.

Slicing the vibrantly colored watermelon, oranges, and plums is indeed exciting when their juices squirt on the screen with each successful hit. Do I have a favorite one to hit? It might be kiwi, a fruit that's lost on me in person. So much juice for such a tiny fruit! (In person I think instead: so little fruit for such labor to peel it. And the squishy texture -- yucko.) For months I perfected the "arcade" version of the game, ever hoping for frenzy mode with the flying horizontal fruit and the chance to rack up more and more points. I totally wowed a coffee seller when I told him my high score was 738. He was so impressed that he called his girlfriend on the phone that very minute. But every time I bragged about this score (for the record, my high is now 889, and that was before the update this month), people seemed especially surprised I did this in arcade mode. The fact of the matter is that I found "classic" mode impossible: one bomb hit, and the game is over. But I took this surprise as a challenge, and this is where my other senses kicked in.

The work of vision is obvious. I watch the fruit appear in order to slice it; I look for bombs in order to avoid them. But what I've realized is that the best way to watch for the bombs is with my ears, as they make a sneaky hissing sound the second they hit the screen. I stop mid track in my slicing: I'm on the alert with my eyes, my ears, my fingers. The pleasure of victory is in the visual details of the exploding fruit, surely, and in the mechanical and tactile action of my fingers. But it's also in the sonic "smack" that rings with a successful hit or the background drumroll that appears the more combos I rack up. My best score in classic mode is now 617, and I am mulling over whether I want to rest on my substantial laurels or try for more. Obviously, these games are built on a desire for more. But more exactly of what? What desires does slicing virtual fruit for virtual points satisfy?

I was recently told these games are an act of anesthetizing for me. I don't disagree with that diagnosis. As my father's health has worsened these past weeks and as my stress at work increased, so my games of Fruit Ninja (and Ski Safari and Spider Solitaire and Bookworm) have multiplied. I even play these games when I watch particularly emotional television, to keep whatever emotions that are on screen at a distance. My phone provides a screen indeed -- sometimes from what else awaits me on the thing itself or what other uses I should put it to. Funny that a thing that helps to dull my senses also, at least on some level, enables me to enjoy them.