My Smartphone Gaming Habits (aka The art of multitasking while taking a crap)

I was watching Louis C.K. a few months ago on HBO or something and had an "amen" moment when he started talking about being alone at home. He pointed out that when you're married with kids and you're finally alone, you're not thinking about masturbating, you're happy to be taking a crap in peace. While I'll admit I take a long time to do my business, in our house trying to find out who "number two works for" while the kids are awake basically puts your potty time on a timer. You have X minutes to do your business and get back out to help your wife or a toddler is going to be knocking on the bathroom door looking for daddy and asking, "What doing, Daddy?"

In these brief moments in my bastion of solace, I'm generally fiddling with my Android while performing the more important task at hand.

Now, to be honest until recently I never really played many games on my smartphones.  I have owned a litany of smartphones of nearly every size and operating system for years now. I love my smartphones, but until recently the games for them basically sucked.  Now, I realize that the iPhone has had some pretty good games for some time now, but I refuse to buy an iPhone because [1] my wife already has an iPad, and [2] Apple is an organization of blood-sucking fascists bent on assimilating everyone into their black turtlenecked Borg... but the iPad is pretty cool...

Anyhow, so up until recently when I was hiding from my wife and kid (sorry honey) in the bathroom, I was mostly reading RSS feeds and browsing the web while I was doing my business. Around Thanksgiving I started ordering people's Christmas presents online from companies like ThinkGeek and Amazon, and since I'm on a tight schedule that led me to start ordering things from my smartphone while I was dropping the kids off at the pool. (Sorry, if I got you a present and you're reading this, I probably ordered it while I was pooping). Tools like Google Shopper and Amazon's Android app were very handy for this. Now that the holidays are over, and being smitten with the usefulness of the Android apps I'd been using to shop, I decided to explore some games I could maybe play during my precious "down time".

What I found really impressed me. I picked up The Sims 3 and Tetris for Android for less than a buck each, as well as a few free trials of simple (but addictive) games like Fruit Ninja and Hungry Shark.

The Sims 3 is nothing less than a near full fledged version of the Sims on my Android. The controls are intuitive, and in my opinion it's a little more fun than the PC version as it takes some of the tedium out of the usual Sims tasks.  It also fits nicely into short game play segments, which is perfect for my potty regimen. Tetris takes a little too long to be a go-to activity for bathroom breaks, while Hungry Shark and Fruit Ninja are just fine.

Pro Toilet Gaming Tips:

1. Never, ever, touch your screen between wiping and washing your hands!  I can't stress this enough. You put this device to your ear and subsequently, your face. Ew.
2. Turn the volume down on your smartphone, people don't want to hear it in public bathrooms and if your family hears you enjoying your bathroom time, they'll rush you out faster.
3. Don't do it at work! You don't need to get canned because your boss hears you leveling up in the next stall over.
4. Claim constipation before entering. This will buy you more time to get your game on.
5. Install a padded seat on your favorite throne. I haven't actually done this, but it seems like a good idea. This will keep your legs from falling asleep while dinking around with your smartphone. Make sure it's a sanitary padded seat that's easy to clean and ditch it if there's any sign of wear. There is nothing more disgusting than a padded toilet seat with cracks in it showing the padding. WTF could be growing in that?!