Tuesday, Sept. 25 probably saw a large spike in absences at schools, colleges and workplaces. Bird flu? Nope. Something in the water supply? Not even close. What, gentle reader would account for so many people staying home?

A video game.

You read it right. At the stroke of midnight on Tuesday morning, retailers began selling Halo 3, the newest in Microsoft's line of best-selling games for their Xbox console game platform.

If what I just said makes no sense to you, ask your children or grandchildren and they will clue you in. Halo has been a powerhouse franchise for Microsoft and has created a subculture of fans.

I'm of the age that just missed learning computers in high school and was the proud owner of the Atari 2600, one of the first home video game consoles. For those of you who remember the 2600, it had a joystick and one button to fire. If you sprang for the extra bucks, you could get an attachment that you could play games where you drive race cars.

As I became a parent and my children came of the age to play video games, we purchased a Nintendo, Sega, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and finally a Playstation 2. It's quite a racket, I must admit. Everyone needs the latest and greatest games, and parents don't want their child to be the only one on the block that doesn't have the latest version of Resident Evil, right?

One thing I noticed as the game consoles became more sophisticated was that the controllers began sprouting more and more buttons and smaller and smaller joysticks.

I joke that I flunked manual dexterity and my hand-eye coordination was never good, but even a fumble fingered goof like me could play Space Invaders on the Atari 2600. The more advanced the games became and the more adept my children became at playing them, I resigned myself to playing computer games. There was one, Wolfenstein 3-D, that I was actually pretty good at, spending hours one snowy February working my way through a Nazi castle, killing Germans, their dogs and assorted zombie style monsters. It was a first person shooter game, where the screen made it appear that it was your hands wielding the weapons.

In fact, I found that "killing a few Nazis" at the end of a stressful day made me feel better. They were only computer Nazis, not real people, so it didn't matter. Then I had an epiphany. The Nazis worked for years to convince the German people that the Jews were somehow less than human, successfully dehumanizing an entire race. I wonder how they would feel about me feeling fine about "killing" Nazis and rationalizing that they were "only Nazis." Would they be proud that their techniques had survived?

But I digress... Let's talk about Halo and the Xbox. Microsoft decided nearly six years ago that they would get into the gaming business and challenge Sony and Nintendo. In 2005, they unveiled the Xbox 360, which has a hard drive and their Xbox Live service allows players to play in games together online. There have been some bumps in the road, but Microsoft has established themselves in the gaming world.

The Halo games center around Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117, John, or simply "Master Chief", a human super-soldier equipped with technologically-advanced battle armor, and his Construct AI companion, Cortana, as the humans of a futuristic universe do battle against the alien Covenant. In this science fiction setting, the term "Halo" refers to the Halo megastructure, a large orbital construction.

It's a beautifully constructed virtual world. The game has a stirring soundtrack -- the Le Mars High School Orchestra performed it at a concert recently. It also has multiple player options where you try to "kill" as many of the friends you are playing with. Whoever kills the most wins.

Last month, during my daughter's bridal shower, I spent the afternoon with my future son-in-law and his younger brother playing this game. This was when I realized that I needed to hang up the gaming controllers once and for all. For the afternoon, I spent my time trying to find the other players and becoming cannon fodder. I "died" many, many, times during that match.

Now I know how those Nazis felt.

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

Thanks for reading, I'll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same.