"Oh, no!" Neb cried. "You're not going to try Web shopping again?" Kids. Aren’t they cute? They understand cyberspace so much better than we do.

Before the sound of his wail faded, I was at my computer and waiting for my browser. "Look, Dad, let’s skip it. Maybe I can get the game another time."

"Don’t worry," I said, always eager to find any shared interest with my 13-year-old. "This is going to be fun."

"Dad, I don’t want to wait all day while you muck around with your computer."

"Hey, it won’t take any time at all. Look, Internet Navigational Explorer for Communications is already up. Now I just have to log onto my ISP."

Neb was in the living room reading a comic book when I got online. I dragged him back into the study. "Now what was the name of that program again?"

"MegaMonstrosity Fingernails of Death II: The Final Confrontation. But can’t we just…"

"Great! We’ll search for it. Real easy with these new browsers. See, I just press Control-L--no, that was in the last version. I just press Control-O, type go megamonstrosity, and the browser will go to Alpha SeekCrawler’s search engine and bring back the relevant sites."

I was absentmindedly playing Minesweeper when the browser finally returned a message. Seemed that Alpha SeekCrawler’s site didn’t exist. "That’s ridiculous!" I cried as I sent the search through again. On the fifth try, I got a list of sites.

"Hey, Neb," I cried. "Come here and see all the cool stuff I found."

Muttering to himself, Neb returned to the study. Alpha SeekCrawler had found 18 serious discussions of MegaMonstrosity games, 56 sites with links to the previous 18, and 863 sites that contained either the word mega or monstrosity. "You know," I said, "I think we’re going about this the wrong way."

"Dad, you are so stupid! When do I get my driver’s license?"

"We need to go to a store."

"Duh!"

"An online store. Let’s see…there was one written up in Mouse Potato Weekly. Here it is. War and Playfulness Online. I’ll just type in the URL and away we’ll go."

Neb woke me up. "Dad, there’s a message on the screen."

Sure enough. The browser’s security system had popped up a warning. The War and Playfulness Site wanted to send me a cookie. I declined, and it asked to send me another cookie. And another. And another.

Then it kicked me off the site. I logged onto the site again, this time accepting every cookie it sent me. As I eagerly watched, a banner ad for Coagulate Toothpaste slowly appeared on my screen. After three minutes of eagerly waiting, I realized that that was all I was going to get.

I clicked the Reload button and waited again. The banner was now for International House of Vodka, and below it a lot of little empty boxes. "See," I explained to Neb, "each of these boxes represents a picture, and as soon as the browser downloads all the pictures, we’ll be able to read the page."

As every Web surfer knows, if you have enough patience, you’ll eventually get some of what you want. While Neb and I argued about the merits of real vs. virtual stores and who should take out the garbage, the War and Playfulness Online home page slowly appeared.

And what a lovely page it was. Photos of happy people talking on the phone and playing on their TVs. Drawings of monsters battling legions of postal workers. And one cute button that told us to "Click here to see what’s available in the store. "

I did as I was told, and was taken immediately to a simpler page bearing only the message: "The War and Playfulness Online Web site requires the ShpielAudio plug-in. If you don’t have this plug-in, you can download it for free from ShpielAudio’s Web site." There was, of course, a link. And I, of course, followed it.

From ShpielAudio’s Home page I went to the Plug-In page, the Download page, the Hardware Requirements page, the Download Options page, the Installation Instructions page, and the page with links to all the sites where I could actually download the file.

Two hours later, ShpielAudio ready, I returned to War and Playfulness Online. I clicked the Products button and eighteen graphics-and-animation-filled pages later, I was ready to order MegaMonstrosity Fingernails of Death II: The Final Confrontation. I went into the living room and dragged Neb away from MTV. "Okay," I said. "Should I buy it?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

I clicked the Order button, which summoned an online form asking for my name, my address, and my credit card number. Suddenly I broke out into a cold sweat.

"Let’s drive to Gandolf & Gladiators," I said. "I’m not comfortable giving out that information over the Internet."