Sweet

My son rolls his eyes. I can feel his mild disdain for my behavior even when he is not in the same room. My wife allows for such silliness, having spent time of her own on this type of thing. I feel a little shame myself, knowing that I could be applying myself to more useful pursuits. But I know that I can handle it. I am not a victim of my time sinks. I can quite Candy Crush anytime I want to.
Let me say from the start that I am absolutely no stranger to the mindless flipping or twisting of buttons, dials or cards. I learned to play solitaire way back when it was an analog game, played with an actual deck of cards. No pointing and clicking. An actual deck of cards. It was somewhere back around the turn of the century that my solitaire habit became more virtual, when I discovered that "Freecell" wedged into the rest of my important work applications. It sat there, taunting me as I worked feverishly toward a deadline, whispering, "Just one game." Sure. Just one game. Then right back to work. That one didn't play out. I really need that satisfaction. I'll just play until I play one all the way out. Oh, look. They keep track of your statistics. I've won nearly half my games. If I play just fourteen more and win them all, I can be over fifty percent.
It's a bit compulsive. A bit. That's when I had a co-worker suggest to me that I should try Minesweeper. That didn't last long. It took a lot of concentration, and a level of strategy that was beyond my level of commitment. Flipping cards was one thing, but getting blown up was quite another. I was not able to endure the carnage.
When it finally came to pass that I upgraded my PC to Windows 10, there was a new frontier allowed me: Candy Crush Saga. My son has confessed to me that it is the "Saga" portion of this title that sets him on edge the most. Sliding colorful little blobs about a grid to make groups of three and four or even five has become a very zen experience for me. Certainly there is the added benefit of having things pop or sizzle or fizz about the screen when I make these groups of imaginary confections, but mastering this little space with the five or ten minutes that I have to offer up to the gods of video time-wasting gives me undue satisfaction.
Which is probably why I flinched when I read that the Candy Crush creators had sold their slice of the time sink universe for a cool five point nine billion dollars. Real money. Not coins or jelly beans. Almost six billion dollars for the sweet version of solitaire. Maybe I should go back to the analog version, using Milky Ways and Hot Tamales.