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| Doesn't this look more fun than human contact and friendship? |
If you are a long time reader you may have noticed that I was a bit
like a heroin addict when it came to video games. I didn't have
access to my medicine and I was sick man, I was sick. I would not go
so far as to say that I used Adam for his Nintendo but there is that
tinge and flavor to our relationship at times. He was into Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles and had that video game on his personal Nintendo
on his personal television in his bedroom. When I would come to play
sometimes I was more interested in the game than what Adam was
wanting to do. It is the sad fact of life that those who have are
bored by their possessions and those who have not spend all of their
time fantasizing about how great it would be to have. He was very
accommodating and would let me play as I wished with very little
complaint but my addiction was not so great that the pangs of guilt
wouldn't tug at me after a couple of hours and I would feel bad
about coming over to play with Adam's Nintendo and not with him. Then
I would put down the controller and go and try to find him in the
house or outside or as had happened on one occasion I realized that I
had been overlooked and the whole family had left together. The
newest Super Mario Bros game was coming out near his birthday and I
was sure that he would get it and I was probably more excited about
it than him. I was intensely focused on the game because I had seen a
documentary about the greatest video game player in the world who was
a young man that went by the name of the wizard and he won the world
championships of video games by finding a warp whistle on Mario 3
which annihilated the competition. Adam had my brother and I over to
his house the night before for the friend birthday party and we gave
him a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toy that we had wrapped up in
layers of boxes and packing tape and had written a joke very similar
to the ridiculous requests of the Knights-Who-So-Recently-Said-Nee in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Of course our great homage was entirely lost on the plebeians at the party be cause they had no idea how they were going to use a herring to open a box and why that would be funny. We went home without knowing if he would receive the new Mario game because he didn't open his gifts from his family at the kid party. So I called him early the next morning and in the background of the call before I greeted him I heard the sounds of the coveted game and actually said, 'Happy Mario 3 Day! Can I come over?” I least he was not confused by my subtly hints and he graciously allowed me to come over and put me right into rotation with his sisters and himself and we spent hours and hours playing the game and made a deep run into the game before his mom was forced to kick me out to go to my own house when it had become night. I made no bones about my desire to come back for seconds and went home and dreamed about Mario navigating the digital perils that Bowser had devised. We played the game long and often until school started and there was not enough time to get a good solid day of play in. I never beat the game or saw it beat until I was an adult and played it to the conclusion on a emulator.
