I think I’ve got the bubonic plague. All the symptoms are there, except for the rat bites, the swollen lymph nodes, the raging epidemic sweeping through the streets, and of course, the death. So it might just be a cold. Weird. I feel like I’ve written these words before. That’s the danger with blogging for years. You never know when you’re going to lapse into a spate of blog déjà vu. So let me run a search to see if I’ve committed this somewhat spurious act.
Back. Whewww. Safe. A search revealed I had only used the word “bubonic” once before, and it was in reference to an imaginary conversation between Hades’ customer support line and a recent denizen. I guess it feels worse than it really is, though when you’re sick, you’ve never felt worse in your life, no matter how badly you’ve had it before. Every breath is a burden. Every moment is actually the glorious exhibition of a microbe’s life-sucking force. This tiny being can knock you off your feet and completely incapacitate you, but even more amazing, it can temporarily rewrite your entire outlook on life. There are times when you just want to die, and those moments are completely understandable. Sleeping helps. It’s the span of time during a sickness that you get to cheat the system a bit. It’s like playing a Nintendo game with the Game Genie to get past stupid levels that you never liked in the first place.
Not that I ever had a Nintendo. It took me almost twenty-one years for me to acquire one. When I was a kid I not only wasn’t allowed to play video games, but I didn’t even have a television. I used to get grounded whenever my parents (read: dad) found out I played video games at friends’ house. I got pretty good about hiding that fact, but sometimes the overwhelming joy of manipulating sprite-based characters into running, jumping, and throwing fireballs at walking mushroom men was too much for me to contain. But I always promised myself I’d get a Nintendo. In fact, I remember making a solemn vow to myself that I’d get one in college. When you’re a kid, the pinnacle of greatness is in the immediate, the physical, the here-and-now. I never imagined that Nintendo 64 would supplant the regular Nintendo as the console to rule over all other consoles. I never imagined the Playstation, or its successor, or any of the other myriad consoles that have come out over the years.
So it was with great joy that I found myself in college, just moved into my first real apartment (boy, you really and truly grow up on the day you move into your first apartment), having visited the thrift store and found, among the used underwear (Ewwww!) and old cookbooks from 1973, a vintage Nintendo. This was something too good to pass up. Plus it was only five dollars. I knew I’d surpass that five bucks in playing pleasure many times over.
I only ever owned two games for that Nintendo. One was the ubiquitous Super Mario Bros. The other was Hudson’s Adventure Island, a game I recall playing all night over at a school buddy’s house one time in fourth grade. These things stick with you. I never got past the first three levels, ever. I was never much good at video games, precisely because I wasn’t allowed to practice at them. And so countless hours of my childhood were never wasted.
Such a shame.
Well, I’m off to do battle with the Microbes Minions and assert my creature dominance. I’m a human being–the ruling species on this planet! I will not be defeated by tiny particulates with cell-invading abilities! That’s what I tell myself, anyway.