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Sadly, I can't claim that I beat the first two games I ever played through. I don't think I ever even got to a bonus round in Duck Hunt and once I discovered the joys of used video game stores I eventually sold off my copy of Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros. for $2 credit towards a PS1 game. It wouldn't be until I got Super Mario All-Stars years later that I would finally beat my first Mario game.

My love affair with Mario, and gaming in general, actually ended quite quickly because my mom would make me quit after five hours a day of staring at the TV. Since there were no saved games and I was, you know, six years old, I didn't really have what it took to get to the eighth world and save our princess.

I had also started first grade and things were getting exciting, friends from kindergarten were in my class and now I got to go to school all day. After school I would go to downtown Rochester with my mom to the Mayo clinic; I was getting a little brother.

On my seventh birthday, my dad wanted to take me to KB Toys at the mall so I could pick out a Barbie I wanted. My mom was too tired, she was in her sixth month of pregnancy and she was working through it part-time at Target, so it was a rare trip with my dad and of course when it came to Barbies he had no clue what he was doing. We got to the store and in addition to getting my Birthday Barbie (that was her real name), my dad had picked out something in the glass case behind the counter. On the way home in the car, I dug it out of the bag and squealed: A Game Boy! I had certainly heard of this, a friend of mine at school had brought one in and had it confiscated. And better yet, I recognized the fat mustached man on the cover of one of the games it came with....Mario! I think that might have been the first time I experienced nostalgia, as I remembered my lazy afternoons in front of the TV, shoving Econofoods chicken nuggets in my mouth as I played. I begged my dad to let me play as soon as we got home, Barbie already forgotten.

But it's funny, as I looked over my dad's shoulder as he showed me how to play, I wanted more than anything just to watch him. It was more exciting for me to see how far he could go with Mario, since in my short history with games I could only manage playing the same levels over and over again. Eventually it got to be that I would just curl up next to my dad, and he would fire up the Game Boy and we would see how far we could go that night. As he played, I would make up a narrative, pieced together from the action of the game and what I had read in the instruction booklet, which I poured over every night. My dad would just laugh at me and ask me what happened next in the story. I'd like to think that my love of a good gaming plot stemmed from those stories I would tell him.

The day we finally reached the final stage and we flew Mario's airplane to victory over the alien Tatanga, I cheered and announced that Mario and Daisy were off to get married on a boat, ala Ariel in The Little Mermaid (guess I was wrong on that one). I had finally seen the ending of a game and my love for gaming had been reignited. In the meantime, my dad bought me a couple of other titles for us to enjoy together. I finally got a new NES game, The Little Mermaid, the first game I ever beat on my own. The last game my dad and I played together was Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly. I was too terrified to even entertain the thought of playing that game on my own, especially in the later levels in the deep woods and underground. I don't think I could bring myself to pick it up today, either, which just goes to show what a pussy I am when it comes to certain games.

I feel it's appropriate to end this chapter here. It wasn't too long before my love for video gaming faded into the background once again. After my brother was born, a lot of things changed at once. My dad stopped playing video games with me, although I never understood why. We don't have the kind of relationship today where I could ask him why he stopped and expect an answer not laced with sarcasm.  We never had a talk about it, he just stopped coming to get me from my room and the Game Boy remained in the end table drawer next to the couch, put back in its original box.  He eventually started taking long trips, gone for several weeks at a time, and after I finished first grade and I hadn't seen my dad for two months, my mom announced that we were moving to Ohio.

I would be staying in New Jersey with relatives as long as it took for my mom and dad to settle on a house, and it would be too much for them to have to entertain me and take care of Ryan.

To be continued...