As a psychology minor, I find it fascinating that childhood behavior can give researchers an in-depth look at predicting behavior in adulthood.

For example, as a child, I was obsessed with the computer game, “The Sims.” Even at an early age, I was a control freak, and this real life simulation game was the perfect outlet.

The first step was to make my Sims. The female character would always mirror how I perceived grown-up Sarah to look: a tall redhead with big, brown eyes, the biggest boobs and tiniest waist available, all in a red, skintight jumpsuit. Super realistic.

Then, no matter what I did, my male counterpart always ended up looking like Aaron Carter – The 14-year-old Carter who was a prolific one-on-one basketball player, not the yucky, 25-year-old Carter who performed at The Westcott Theater last week.

(Side note: I actually had tickets to see him last week, but could not bring myself to go see him perform a song that wasn’t on “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It),” or see his blonde five o’clock shadow.)

Aaron and I would start our lives together with a few kids by building a home from scratch. I would buy a lot, use a cheat to get free money and build my customized fortress.

I needed to make space for the art room, music room, learning room, gym, pool, game room, garden, special sex room with the vibrating bed, and the pet’s room. I don’t know how Sims lived like that.

Once my house was perfect, my Sims would receive their schedules — my life is not all fun and games, so neither should my Sims’ lives. Their schedules were a perfect balance of work and play. The children had to read a book, play the piano and go to the gym before they could watch television or play the pinball machine.

This would work out for a while, until eventually, the children would start to resist.

“Meed boo ra ka!” they would yell at me.

“Sorry,” I would say. “You can’t pee until you master this Bach piece.”

“Be meed doo ra ka tuu me”

“Nope.”

Eventually, they would get so frustrated they’d pee themselves, right in front of the grand piano. This was gross, so as punishment, they’d go to bed without dinner.

They never learned their lesson and kept resisting their perfectly balanced schedules. Once, one of my misbehaving Sims burnt his meal and started a kitchen fire. In my “panic,” I accidentally deleted the doors so he couldn’t get out. Whoops.

Soon, he was complaining of hunger, peeing on himself and failing school so badly that he spun, magically obtained a uniform and was sent off to military school.

“Serves you right,” I thought.

Then his sister, who was doing so well and even training a puppy, started to resist. No matter how hard I tried, she would not stop complaining about reading a book before she watched television. So, I put her in the pool and took away the ladder. When the Grim Reaper came to play rock, paper, scissors, I told her dad to lose on purpose — he did.

No matter how many times I drowned my Sims or deleted their door during a kitchen fire, they still would not listen to me.

Actually, you know what? I take back what I said about using childhood behavior to predict adult personalities. Forget everything, actually. Behavior psychology is kind of dumb and inaccurate science, don’t you think? Sometimes kids are just being kids.

Those Sims were asking for it.

Sarah Schuster is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears every week in Pulp. She can be reached at seschust@syr.edu.

Published on February 28, 2013 at 12:20 am

Contact Sarah: seschust@syr.edu