Free The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret Page A

fine.
    It was an ordinary Saturday morning when she told us that her grandson had asked her to play a special game with him, a game you can only play on Mom’s phone. It’s really easy: all you have to do is shoot birds out of a slingshot so they can destroy buildings where green pigs live.
    â€œAh, Angry Birds,” my wife and I said together, “our favorite game.”
    â€œI’ve never heard of it,” my mother said.
    â€œYou are probably the only one,” my wife said. “I think there are more Japanese soldiers hiding in the forests, not knowing that World War Two is over, than people on this planet who don’t know this game. It is probably the most popular iPhone game ever.”
    â€œAnd I thought your favorite game was Go Fish with the cards of flowers of Israel,” my mother said, offended.
    â€œNot anymore,” my wife said. “How many times can you ask someone without yawning whether they have a squill?”
    â€œBut that game,” my mother said, “even though I watched it without my glasses, it looked like when those birds hit their targets, they die.”
    â€œThey sacrifice themselves to achieve a greater goal,” I said quickly. “It’s a game that teaches values.”
    â€œYes,” my mother said. “But that goal is just to collapse buildings on the heads of those sweet little piglets that never did them any harm.”
    â€œThey stole our eggs,” my wife insisted.
    â€œYes,” I said. “It’s actually an educational game that teaches you not to steal.”
    â€œOr, more accurately,” my mother said, “it teaches you to kill anyone who steals from you and to sacrifice your life doing it.”
    â€œThey shouldn’t have stolen those eggs,” my wife said in the tear-choked voice that emerges when she knows she’s about to lose an argument.
    â€œI don’t understand,” my mother said. “Did those infant piglets themselves steal your eggs, or are we talking about collective punishment here?”
    â€œCoffee, anyone?” I asked.
    After coffee, our family broke its Angry Birds record when the teamwork between my son, an expert in shooting cluster birds that hit multiple targets, and my wife, an expert in launching birds with square-shaped iron heads that can penetrate anything, succeeded in collapsing an especially well fortified, beehive-shaped structure on the swollen green head of the mustached prince of pigs who said his last “Ho-la” and was then silenced forever.
    While we ate cookies to celebrate our moral victory over the evil pigs, my mother started hassling us again. “What is it about that game that makes you love it so much?” she asked.
    â€œI love the weird sounds the birds make when they crash into things,” Lev said with a giggle.
    â€œI love the physical-geometrical aspect of it,” I said, shrugging. “That whole business of calculating angles.”
    â€œI love killing things,” my wife whispered in a shaky voice. “Destroying buildings and killing things. It’s so much fun.”
    â€œAnd it really improves coordination,” I said, still trying to soften the effect. “Seeing those pigs exploding into pieces and their houses collapsing,” my wife continued, her green eyes staring into infinity.
    â€œMore coffee, anyone?” I asked.
    My wife was the only one in the family who really hit the nail on the head. Angry Birds is so popular in our home and in others because we truly love to kill and break things. So, it’s true that the pigs stole our eggs in the short opener of the game, but between you and me, that’s only an excuse for us to channel some good old rage in their direction. The more time I spend thinking about that game, the more clearly I understand something:
    Under the adorable surface of the funny animals and their sweet voices, Angry Birds is actually a game that is