Do you smell that, kids? The fragrant lavender? The restorative bouquet of lilac? Nature’s heavenly flora, tickling our nostrils like the fluttering butterfly’s kiss?

Why, it’s Springtime—the most awe-inspiring seasonal Glade PlugIn! And what better way to commemorate its inaugural sprays than with a household tradition: the opening game of Wii Sports.

Let us reawaken those senses deadened from months of Mountain Snow, Powder Fresh and Clean Linen, and let us bask in Springtime—the product whose very title arouses blissful reveries of bowling matches and homerun derbies past.

Breathe deep of Springtime, children, and glance out across the vibrant landscape—how brightly the sun shines on the groves beyond the window! Yes, you really have to turn down those shades to get rid of that glare on the television, Nathaniel.

That’s it. Use your weight.

Doug Jr., dance your spritely pixie dance, skipping fingers to that buried place where the Wii Sports disc has hibernated. And pass me my Wiimote whenever your whirling whimsy brings you beneath the TV stand. It’s just horribly difficult for me to reach way over there from here, on the couch…

Oh, what marvels, what trumpeting fanfare! The enchanting charm of the Wii startup screen! How my eyes sparkle with the main menu’s periwinkle façade, how mine dangled feet waltz to that playful jingle.

Does it require my declaration—to proclaim that Wii Sports is about the simpler joys in life? The digital crack of the bat; the glorious sensation of boxing your boys’ avatars, right in the stomach?

Sure Nintendo’s released contemporary titles fancier than Wii Sports—adventures necessitating lasso tosses to mobilize characters, hip thrusts for hatchet swings—but only here did the gaming scribes truly grasp the detection of motion. Only here can a man hit a grand slam with a mere flick of his right wrist, preserving his left hand to scratch those parts ripe with the itches of the day.

I challenge you boys to find an equally delightful gaming experience that corrals four sports to one disc. Five if you count golf, which we do not in this family.

Why, I fondly recall the springtimes of old, when my father and I would play ball. Sons, you would’ve had no patience for the sluggish gameplay, nor would you conceive of an 8-bit baseball so impossibly small! I’d spend hours trying to navigate my fielder to where a line drive lay against the outfield wall, while your grandpa spent hours more rerouting his base runners. It was more work than fun, I tell you.

It was only through our love for each other, our love for the game, that we made it work—enduring the sole air freshener scent available at the time: a stale potpourri of aerosol fumes and ammonia.

And just look at us now. Gaze upon this batter’s comically oversized head and tell me this isn’t the paradise that Pop-Pop envisioned for his kin. The ritual of sport preserved in a living room that smells of a new day, of Springtime.

Just a father, his sons and Wii Sports. Yes, I think that’s all we need.