There was no flash or anything, I just opened my eyes and was living it.
Aunt Cheryl pulled me by my hand and had us all gather around a tiny tube television on an old desk in the downstairs parlor room or whatever she called it, and she turned on the Nintendo.
“Jacko and William got it two days ago,” she said. “This is Mario, you got to jump up and land on the guys before they get ya. You play, Jare. Here’s the joystick.”
She handed me the controller she called a joystick and my hands were so small. I couldn’t believe it, and how little my legs were, swinging as I sat on the torn-up leather office chair, and I began to play the first level of Super Mario Bros. I ran through the level with precision, the acquired acumen of an aficionado. I left no coin, hidden star, extra life opportunity unexploited.
My cousins, Jacko, 7, and William, 4, were yelling in bewilderment as I displayed such mastery of this video game realm, so new to them. At this point, I must have been around 5-years-old, I estimated, as I jumped Mario from the stone block steps to the very pinnacle of the flagpole, to slide down triumphant. A virtuosic performance. Flawless symphony of motion in 8-bit.
“Oh my God, Jare, how did you beat ‘em like that?!” Aunt Cheryl yelled in my ear, excitedly.
My cousins were jumping up and down, screaming, “Oh my Godddd,” and other things.
I waited for the short interlude to end, where Mario exits the miniature castle and then jumps down the sewer pipe for the first time. I calmly continued playing the underground part of the first level, with the really great music. I took a moment of meditation, to map out this new old world, my mind heaving in the body of a child, who was myself.
Super Mario Bros. is a game that I had never managed to beat in its entirety. More than thirty years of intermittent attempts to guide the little mushroom-eating man to his woman, beginning at THIS EXACT MOMENT. Amazing.
I used to dream of traveling through time, my own timeline, frequently during my late teen years and early twenties. In my dreams, I would be sitting in my old second grade classroom, astounding the teacher with the “genius” from my present-day brain. Solving math problems, reading science textbooks and all that. In other dreams I would win youth sports championships with the athletic prowess of a grown man, ninja-like in pinning my way through wrestling tournaments and running Bo Jackson routes in midget football. I would always wake up before it got weird, before I could tell my grandma that she was going to die in 1998, or something like that.
Trivial events from grade school, where I lost a fight to a bigger kid, or coming in second place in the geography bee, I’d get to relive them and make them right. Even in these dreams of rare power, with arcane mysticism at play, I was so self-serving. In these dreams I never used my child genius and its resulting attentions to let the people of the world know that Y2K wasn’t going to do a motherfucking thing, or compile a list of impending natural disasters. Just beating up bullies and collecting accolades.
I decided to make the most of this opportunity and confide in my aunt.
“I’m 37-years-old, Aunt Cheryl. I’ve never actually beat the first Super Mario Bros., because it’s hard as fuck. I’ve beat every other Mario brothers game, for every system except all the new bullshit. Beat it on Nintendo 64, all that good shit. It’s crazy that it’s finally happened. I traveled in time, and it’s to this moment. I really can’t fucking believe it. Also, on September 11, 2001, a terrorist named Osama bin Laden will blow up the World Trade Center with two hijacked airplanes, but, uh, there’s probably a lot more to the story.”
During my explanatory monologue, Aunt Cheryl made faces contorted by deep confusion, mouthing variations of “Huh?” and “Wha?” with increasing volume. She became really frantic and started yelling at 5-year-old me.
“JARE WHAT ARE YOU TALKIN ABOUT WHY ARE YOU TALKIN LIKE THAT AHH!!!”
Then struck the distant yet deafening sound of otherworldly thunder. The small television screen flashed with bright patterns of pixels. Aunt Cheryl froze in place and drooled giant gobs of saliva, like, literally running out of her mouth like a cartoon dog, while her pupils bounced around her eyes like gnats. My young cousins had the same thing going on: frozen, drooling, bouncing pupils.
Mario the Plumber appeared on the screen, against the background of flashing 8-bit chaos. In his Italian accent, he spoke to me:
It’s a-me, Mario! You canna never speaka to the past a-people and a-tell them that you’re-a from a-the future! That’s-a-the deal! The world is a-gonna collapse now. Ok, bye bye!
My vision faded into TV static, that snowy hiss of white noise.
Later, in Hell proper, Satan granted me a temporary seat at his infernal conference table of flames, across from Mario. Aunt Cheryl was there, too. There were many seated at this table. Satan wheeled in a small television set like in elementary school, and we all focused our attention on the screen.
In a short scene, my lifeless body, surrounded by empty bags and a needle, was visible amongst a pile of laundry on the floor in the room of the boarding house where I had been staying, right before all this Nintendo time travel. An inhuman figure, spindly like a man spider, kicked in the door and rifled through the pockets of my corpse. I was able to identify it as none other than Waluigi, out there on his own journey. The hellish conference room erupted in laughter. I can’t say I didn’t join in.
