Even in the best of times, I need one of my kids or their friends to help me learn stuff like that.

But last night one of the boys' buddies slept over. This morning, he asked if he could fiddle (my word) with our Wii to see if he could get it working.

He had seen the gun wand for ``The Hunt'' on our coffee table.

Let me back up. This is a kid that got held back one year, but he is sharp as a tack, especially in electronics.

Put it this way, our oldest boy, who is pretty sharp himself and in college, poked his head in briefly last week and tried to get the Wii going and couldn't.

Here's a perfect example of why the American education system is going to hell.

No, the kid who slept over last night probably doesn't do his homework perfectly on time or ace those standard tests.

In the old days, teachers would have worked with him and he would have advanced with his class and found uses for the skills he is very good at, and I mean very good at.

But in these times, the times of standardized testing determining funding and whether or not schools go on a watch list, kids like him are sacrificed to advance the necessity of the general good.

And it sucks.

He had Wii working before my wife and I had the dishes for our special Saturday breakfast--pancakes (blueberry, chocolate chip and plain), sausage links, bacon and eggs--cleared.

I am talking under 10 minutes. It was something to do with resetting both the Wii box and the remote, then synching them with each other.

Sounds simple, but I thought we had tried that.

And we have Wii again.

I blistered the Wii bowling again tonight.

And drifted off on a tangent wondering if we will keep kids like him within the functioning levels of our society.

The Hunt video game? I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it looks really realistic. In fact, they were asking me if some of the sections were really like that.

As in, ``Is it that really how hard hunting is?''

Yes.

But it is easy compared to figuring where our education system is headed.