Useful Masquerades

Saturday was an interesting day of discovery for me. Let me show you why.

The beginning of the day passed without much interest, but after lunch I decided to invite my good friend Troy over to my house. He promptly arrived and we soon teamed up with my brother Andy to play Wii Sports. Now we usually pass the Wiimote around after our turn is done, and usually we catch it. Sure we occasionally drop it and it hits the ground, but that safety jacket makes it hard to break.

Of course, we broke it anyway.

I threw it straight to Andy. He ducked. The Wiimote went over the lazyboy and hit hard on the wood floor. We picked it up, hoping it was nothing to be worried about, but we soon found it was. While it could still sense most motion at the screen, the shake mechanism and most of the actions in Wii sports had been screwed up. After debating who's fault it was, it came to the conclusion that I, being the richest, should buy a new Wiimote.

Well, I knew it had to be done, but I was hoping that perhaps I could get it for cheap on the Internet. What can't you get on the Internet? So I googled for a bit for cheap Wii remotes and came to several inexpensive links through eBay. I knew that I couldn't buy it because I wasn't eighteen, but I still clicked on 'create new user'.

Now before I tell you that, it's essential that you know that when I started off in high school, my parents gave me the high school privileges. For most kids that meant a phone and a bigger allowance. Which is basically what I got, buy my folks thought it a good idea to give me a Visa Buxx Card in place of cash. This is a pre-loaded debit card which my parents generously load with $100 a month, with which I buy lunches and anything else I want.

Of course this debit card had my name and age and all that on it, but miraculously, when I entered in my debit number for eBay and told them I was eighteen, it sent me right through the process as if I was the proper age. I thought to myself, this can't be right. They'll just kick me off. And it seemed as if I was correct-they told me I needed a Paypal to use eBay. Surely they would check the age on my debit, right?

Wrong! I entered in the same false information about my age as I did on eBay, and, presto! I now have a Paypal and eBay account. Apparently all of these websites simply assume that anyone who's got a debit or credit is eighteen. They don't check the age. They've been bluffing all along, and I've called it.

And it's not as if my eBay account is useless either-I've already bid on and bought several items with no problems at all. As far as the World Wide Web knows, I'm eighteen and a half. And now I've got a huge window of oppurtunity-much larger than I ever thought I could get out of the Internet. But I'll have to be careful. Like they say: "A fool and his money are soon parted!" Let's hope I don't qualify as a fool.