When you play a video game, you become a new person. You become an inch high, pixelated being running around in a two-dimensional world. When I was a child playing Nintendo for the first time, it was a milestone achievement in hand-eye coordination to know where the buttons were without looking. And more importantly to understand the effect each button had on the character.

Push A to Jump. Hold B to run. Right, left, up, down.

This is power. This is control. Kids have bad handwriting because their still undeveloped brains have not yet mastered fine motor control. To push a digital button and get an exact response: This is power. This is control.

Video games have a number of subliminal messages built into them.

In life, one wins or one dies. Unfortunately, in real life you only get one shot at winning. So unless I save the princess this time around, she'll die.

The world is laid out in a straightforward manner, going in order of increasing complexity. Squash all your enemies in elementary school and you'll advance to the middle school world.

If something odd happens, it will be important later. If you get a chicken from a wizard, you'll need that chicken to fly across a chasm later.

Have you ever played a two-player game and not realized that you were looking at the wrong screen until the game had been underway for a while? Have you ever seen kids at an arcade futilely jiggle the controls of a game that say "Insert Coin" at the top? Have you ever felt like your life was the demo loop that results when no one presses start?

So, my friends from high school, Catherine and Shige', want us all to meet up sometime this summer in order to hang out. We were all talking on IM and making plans and trying to come up with some way for the car deprived Catherine to go from Conway (Myrtle Beach) to West Columbia (Columbia) and also for me to go from Rock Hill (Charlotte) to West Columbia (Columbia) while Shige' goes to Atlanta (Atlanta) and then back West Columbia (Columbia) in order to pick up some stuff left there during our disillusioning trip. And this is like 3AM that we're talking, and eventually we sort of have a plan for me to possibly go to West Columbia (Columbia) then to Atlanta (Atlanta) depending on if my parents let me drive down. We kinda had to give up on making it to Conway (Myrtle Beach) during the weekend, since it wouldn't possibly work timing-wise.

So, I have to talk to my parents and convince them to let me drive to Columbia. Now, I've been driving by myself with their approval this summer, but I wasn't really sure about their attitude toward me driving alone down I-77 for 82+ miles. So, the next morning (afternoon) once I woke up, I went to my mom's warehouse and ran around trying to find someone to sign off on me taking the Honda to Columbia and Atlanta. Using some verbal judo to make it seem that my inquiry was about the car's health not my driving skill, I got the answer that the car could be taken to Columbia anytime, but as Atlanta was so far away that trying to pick up the car if broken down was impractical.

So, apparently driving to Columbia is something that I do.
Wow, that's news to me. Good news, I suppose.

As a little kid, I always looked to video games as a mechanism of bliss. I watched the "Mario Brothers" Show and asked the kid with a Nintendo to describe it to me. Boards and levels and goombahs, it was all so fascinating and foreign. It wasn't until at least third grade (my memory's fuzzy about dates already) that we got a used Atari from a yard sale. It came with the original "Mario Brothers" game, where you're flipping crabs in a system of pipes, as well as "Pitfall II" and "Frogger" and a few others. And this was the greatest thing ever, until another yard sale brought us a Nintendo Entertainment System. Around this time, the Super NES came out, but given that the NES was the most popular system ever, it hardly mattered. Without an NES, you can never truly know the joy of blowing cartridges, a joy which N64 cartridges tell you not to experience. We had Marios I, II, and III as well as who the hell cares. We had other inconsequential games and we borrowed games from the neighbors, but those three were the big ones. The most important games of a lifetime. Other famous games, like "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" and "The Legend of Zelda" didn't enter into my worldview until much later.

We eventually got a "Game Genie" and cheated our way to fun in all the Marios and whatnot. I wasn't ever very good, and I enjoyed watching as much as playing. My younger brother related the other day his memory of getting to the end of "Mario 3" for the first time during a sick day and waiting for us healthy kids to come home to beat it. A family triumph over the forces of Bowser's evil turtle kingdom.

Eventually, we got a Sega (a system from the same generation as was current!) and I passed from one system to another until at Governor's School, when my roommate Mitch introduced me to the wonders of ROM files. Since then I've been playing NES and SNES games as my mood suits me. I borrowed time on a number of Nintendo 64s, until eventually my brother-in-law gave me his old one, however without any games of importance, as he was a renter.

"Mario 3" is, needless to say, the best game in history. More on that later.

So, after some discussion, I gave up on West Columbia (Columbia) for the weekend and resolved to wait patiently for the next weekend, at which time not only Catherine but other high school people could come. Erin and Kate are two Greenville chicks going to the College of Charleston. I've been emailing Erin some this summer, asking her about her life and going on about my own. Erin spent most of the summer at a camp in Virginia in order to learn Tibetan before she travels hence for the fall semester.

Tibetans are mostly secret Buddhists. Buddhists are reportedly very cool with loosing control and desire, watching demo loops, etc. Om mani padme h'um (o lotus jewel, amen).

Om. Om. Om, etc.

OK, here's the thing about video games: there is no reward without risk. So, in order to enjoy a game as more than a screensaver, it is necessary for the risk of failure to be felt. If failure is not real, victory cannot be real either. That's the trouble with "Game Genie," cheating is only fun because of the residual effect of stimulus-response pairing of pushing buttons and feeling good. A "Game Genie" is useless, unless you already associate the game with fun. Anyhow, the effect of all this is that you feel just as bad losing as you feel good winning. That's why I can get pretty angry when losing at video games. If during a multi-player game, my winning opponent questions my drive to win and the anger and self-loathing resulting from my failure to do so, I in turn question my opponent's source of joy in the whole endeavor. Why play a competitive game against a foe of comparable skill, if one does not intending to win? Flashy images can be seen on MTV. For the real thrill, one needs to be a man with something to lose.

This being the mid-college summer equivalent of Christmas, I anxious and excited the night before the big trip. I sat in bed with what can only be described as pre-launch jitters. I attempted to go to bed around 3:30am--hours before my usual bedtime. My alarm clock was set for noon, and I told myself to try to get up on first ring. I read a devotional about how plans don't work without God's help and laughed. I sat in bed, somewhere between awake and asleep. I tried to visualize "The Legend of Zelda 3: a Link to the Past" as movie, as a way of counting sheep.

How do you sleep the night before you go to the moon?

At 9am, I half-woke up in bed with nervous excitement, and knowing I was still too sleepy to go anywhere, I reset my alarm clock for 11.

10:50 or so, I got out of bed to face a day full of promise. I IM-ed Shige' about my impending departure then drove to my mom's warehouse to say so long for the weekend. Except that the warehouse doesn't open until noon, a fact that had never been important to me before, so I just circled the parking lot, put on my "Element 101" CD and drove away into the future.

Driving video games are way unrealistic. In none of the arcades can you turn the wheel a whole revolution. When I first became interested in my impending ability to drive at say age 14 or so, I was shocked to learn that the wheel needed full turns to get the car to make a corner. I was also surprised at how far a car will go with the accelerator let off. In racing games like "Mario Kart 64" letting off the accelerator is like letting your opponents win. "Grand Turismo 3" for the Playstation 2 is maybe the most realistic looking driving game ever, with hundreds of actual cars from which to choose, but it still lacks the part of driving that never really left my mind, the ability to total a car and end lives doing so. In "Grand Turismo 3," you can make better time on the Sunday Cup by skimming against the guardrails without letting off the accelerator. I haven't tested that in real life yet, but I'm sure if it worked, they'd do it in NASCAR.

Anyhow, all this took place via flashback from when the schoolteacher dies in present times, and his wife goes through some hassle to get a traditional funeral.

After the movie, John and I went to Shige's parent's restaurant, where Kate and Erin and Denise were waiting. There was a minor seating dilemma in that I could sit by Erin, but in doing so, I would isolate John on the other side of the table with people he didn't know, but I did it anyway. By way of explanation, I offer a flashback.

At dinner, Shige' served us soup and sushi and we all talked and Erin gave me a book, "'Salaryman' in Japan." Everyone else had apparently read parts of it before I showed up and found it quite hilarious, the monotony of a salaryman's life, the "temptations" and "dangers" that face his lonely wife, the extreme company loyalty. I knew she bought some sort of gift whilst in Virginia and merely awaited a chance to give it to me, but I had nothing for her. I'm unthoughtful like that. All I had to give her was an old card with dinosaurs, a palm tree, and my name on it, which I had found in the basement. Apparently, it was made to be put into children's birthday presents. At any rate, I use them as business cards, without which no salaryman should be. However, I disgraced the card in the eyes of Japan's salarymen by writing my address at Furman on the back.

Erin is of the class of girl who resists photographs at first, but slowly succumbs. Hence, I have a number of pictures of the back of her head. Her hair went gray when she was ten, which is incredibly cool just by itself. It's a dark gray speckled through with white hairs. She has a penchant for the color black, and, true to herself, was wearing a black shirt and black pants. She's not a small girl, but still beautiful in her own way.

"I'm such a rain cloud," she said, and we all protested, probably too much. That's the kind of girl I fall for every time.

After I got back and went through my pictures, I ended up sending her an email with a picture attached that I created, in which her hair was a rain cloud, pouring out over India and Tibet. I told her to have fun monsooning.

So, we all sat and talked while eating sushi with chopsticks. I frequently employed the technique known to salaryman as tsukibashi, skewering the sushi with the end of the chopstick. The sushi was pretty good, though some of the invertebrates went down less smoothly than the fish. At any rate, a grand time was had with topics ranging from rabies to Erin's being cooler than everyone else to the various bad parenting techniques employed by our parents to my love of bitter green tea, coffee, and possibly women. Around the table were Denise, another high school chum with a boyfriend and guy friend, Morgan another high school fellow now attached to Kate romantically, Lauren Manning still another high schoolian, Angelface of Columbia and his girlfriend.

Eventually, after much laughter and conversation, the restaurant closed and people dispersed, leaving Erin, Kate, Morgan, John, Shige', and me to wander the streets of downtown Columbia. Wandering is a fine art, which I practiced much alone as a child. I still appreciate its charm and believe it to be one of the finer activities to enjoy with friends. We wandered past Columbia's monumental artworks and vagrants and street cleaners before giving up and going to Krispy Kreme. Before that however, I managed on two occasions to secure my arm around Erin's back. (Anything done once really doesn't count, at least in matters like this. Notice that in a good relationship, the first kiss is followed by a second confirming kiss.) The romantically attached Morgan and Kate never laid hands on one another that I saw, and I thought it humorous that to casual observers it would have seemed obvious that Erin and I were linked.

These are all the sorts of romantic escalation techniques that I employ at the start of a relationship. Some light hugging here, a lot of talk, a lot of sharing of pain, and so forth until the relationship is formalized by a pair of kisses. These actions come naturally to me and are about as sincere as anything I do, yet here I am watching them, helpless to do anything but mentally comment on the unfolding situation. I'm such a hideous bastard. Erin is a friend and a good one too, but here I am, thinking of my move.

At dinner, I had occasion to boast, "Three girlfriends can't be wrong!"

Indeed, they all dumped my ass first.

I only started swearing as casually as I do now after being hooked on "Smash Brothers." As I like to quip, it was because, "fucking Kirby wouldn't fucking triple jump when I fucking said to!" Somehow, while playing "Smash Brothers," oaths started pouring out of my mouth, unrestrained, and that was the end of my self-control. The great joy of a Smash victory came at the cost of my tongue. I don't mind so much; if it hadn't been "Smash Brothers," it would have been something else. I was already trending in the direction of more swearing, as my brother is now, but still one wonders about what could have been.

At Krispy Kreme, as is my habit I drew the only cartoon figures that I can. The women are distorted, with large waists, strange breasts, and a chin that doesn't add up. The men are mostly reflections of my self-image, with different hair styles and colors. I also drew a rain cloud with a lightning bolt. Erin told me that I should draw a hurricane for it to be with, so I stealthily crossed out the heart that I had wistfully draw on top of it as she spoke. I try to convince Erin and Kate to stay in town, rather than driving back to Charleston for the night, but they go, leaving me with just a hug and some memories.

That I'm an inconsistent player is one of my biggest weaknesses as a gamer. Some days I can take on a whole team of polygons, other days even Link cuts through my defense. If I could maintain a level of play, then I could hope to ease that level up slowly. As it is though, recently I have reached a personal pinnacle in ability. In the winter term, my "Mario 64" skill shot up considerably, as I mastered the 120 stars. I re-beat some old games without the aid of cheats, notably "Super Mario World." I'm currently up to Kraid in "Super Metroid" but it looks like I may have hit a permanent roadblock unless I put a significant amount of time and effort into it.

John, Shige', and I went back to Shige's house and watched "Yojimbo" by Kurosawa. The idea of the story is a heartless samurai rolls into a town where two rival bosses are fighting. He plays one side against the other until everyone is dead but him. The only hitch in his plan came when he sees a helpless family caught in the crossfire. He helps them out and, as a result, gets the crap beat out of him. In the end though, he wins and the town is set right again and he rolls on to the next town. The thing with the helpless family was he couldn't help it. He had to get involved and help them out. He couldn't control his conscience.

After that, we ate at a Waffle House where John and Shige's friend Studstill works. He tried to direct me to his section, but I sat at the wrong table, since I was too distracted a patron's comment about my Boy Scout shirt, which I had forgotten I was wearing. It's funny the things one forgets.

That night, I sat in bed (futon) after a full day and thought about Erin. I thought about how I look at her and all I see is little silver linings, none of the rumbling dark gray storm clouds.

Just like her hair.

I've told you before, but it bears repeating. I'm not actually any good at video games. Which makes my love of them all the more puzzling, paradoxical. I may have earned most the 120 stars with help on a couple by my college friends, but I could never beat Bowser. I swung that guy as hard as I could, but I never did it. "Mario 1" and "Mario the Lost Levels" are incomprehensibly hard to me. As I said, I only recently beat "Super Mario World" without state saves and I'm working on "Super Metroid." I doubt I could have beaten "Link to the Past" without save states. "Ocarina of Time" is a funny story. I played a friend's save game at the death of the tree spirit at the start of the game and took it up to the first half of the game ending fight with Gannon/Gannondorf. After finally beating him and escaping the castle, I lost to his dinosaur form and decided I had played enough of my friend's game and thus walked away from it. "Ocarina of Time" ended for me with the start of Winter break. When I tried again in spring, I was lost and dropped the game. I found myself unable to get into the other, older Zelda games in part because of their challenge. It took me a long time and a lot of state saving to get through my original Earthbound adventure. And in the second, I'm still not done routing Giygas, shockingly. I mean, this is my favorite game of all time and it is better than I am. I am unable to play the game I most love. It makes no sense, that I love something so far above and beyond my worthiness.

Just like her.

The next day, Shige' and I were waiting at a Waffle House for Catherine to show up. We didn't know it at the time, but she was on a different highway and thus had stopped at another Waffle House, closer to Shige's house. Shige's mom got the call, figured the mess out and delivered Catherine to our Waffle House. Had we attempted to take control of the situation earlier, we would have missed Catherine and Shige's mom. Sometimes the best thing is to just stay put.

I didn't fall in love all at once, of course. My junior year at Governor's School, Erin was a senior, which in the logic of Governor's School made her one million years older than me. I suppose even then I had a crush on her, but I couldn't do anything about it. It was like being in love with Cassiopeia, a stellar system beyond one's reach. This much can be said for my life, I do believe that I am genuinely more bold in my actions now than I was then. I do a few more scary things, relationally, etc. A fun recurring experience from then was us all sitting around Erin's friends Shosha and Stephanie as they played Jewel covers and original songs. The songs were all melancholic in lyric and mostly in tune, but Shosha said someday she'd write a happy song. And I guess I'm still waiting for Shosha's first happy song, but truth is I like sad songs, too, so long as I have good company. Like listening to spring raindrops fall on the window, when you're warm and dry.

While we talked in the Waffle House, it thundered outside. Catherine told it to stop. She claimed she could sometimes control the weather like that. I thought about rain clouds.

We hadn't a lot of time with Catherine as this was merely a stop on her way to college, but we made the best of it. We all watched the video from the WaHo Z.E.R.0. debacle, to which John had added sound. It was pretty cool. I tried not to pay attention to the parts where I spoke or did anything, on accounta I'm like those girls who don't want their picture taken, only I don't know myself enough not to want my picture taken.

Catherine tried out "Smash Brothers" for the first time and did very respectably for a girl, though like most girls she picked up the controller wrong.

After watching Shige's mom entertain us with a top and a string, we headed back to a Waffle House where Catherine's mom picked her up again. After a couple false starts and some map reading, she was gone. Another thing I cannot control.

I drove back in one CD and a couple spare minutes. Given that I went around 90 miles, and the CD was 66 minutes long, that means I had to average at least 80MPH. The CD was "Dublab Presents: Freeways." That was my second listen, but when Damon Aaron sang "Don't Get Up Again," I sang along on the choruses and felt like crying for the second time in two days. Neil, you didn't go home after your big adventure, so I'm not sure, how well you can relate to me stuck back in Rock Hill (Charlotte). As you can imagine, it's a change of gears that I didn't want to go through. It was semi-rainy in spite of Catherine's hard work and I was probably going to fast for conditions or the speed limit, but I didn't care. "I won't get up again / All my troubles came down!" Something about the cello line dub, it gets my throat and I can't do anything about it.

Before I left, Shige' and I were driving around trying to fetch him a bus ticket, and we saw a car that said, "Give me funk and punk and everything beautiful," and I thought it a lovely sentiment, though we argued about the semantics of it. (Does that imply that funk and punk lack beauty?, etc.) At the time, my cheeks were sore from smiling, a condition which used to frequently affect me when I drove. These days, I'm used to driving, so I don't smile just because I'm behind a wheel.

Neil, you haven't an excessive amount of control in your life at this point, aside from Mission Control. One doesn't have many options on the face of barren world.

The only kind of control I have at this point in my life has three handgrips, ten buttons, and an analog stick.

But I guess not having control isn't such a bad thing. To the folks in Mission Control, it must seem like a video game, flashing lights on a panel full of switches.

One of the other things that video games teach you is about time. My brother says that when he plays games, he feels the time "wasted" slipping away. I can't say I feel that at all. Time is a peculiar thing in games; it can be stopped at any point and left indefinitely. I think life could use a Start/Pause button. I think this weekend would have been a good time to use it. One of the nice features of Earthbound is if you play too long, your dad calls and tells you to take a break. It's only a suggestion, but it's nice that he looks out for you. It keeps you from getting too wrapped up and losing track of time. He tells you that the world can be saved later, not to freak out trying to control when and how it happens.

My one ex-girlfriend had some control issues that made me assume before dating her that she'd be a bit of a dominatrix. It turns out that was just a façade. It's really funny too, though not worth the time to explain the obvious evolution of the coping method through behavior-rewarding. The one time it came up with the two of us was soon after we had started kissing. She suddenly sprung up and whipped out the death-bitch tone that she used to frighten so many people, "If you leave a hickey!…"

I nearly fell over laughing. This scared little girl was trying to sound tough to me, now of all times, I thought.

She's a deist; she believes in a God with no control at all.