My grandson started playing the Mario Kart game shortly after Christmas. He spent days whooping and maneuvering and perfecting his Mario Kart victory dance, and then one day, in a fit of what can only be called pure optimism, he handed me the controls. Since I did not want to out myself as being a complete video klutz (there’s plenty of time for that), I gave it a go.
For those of you who have not played, Mario Kart features a group of cartoon characters who race around a video course at breakneck speed. There are numerous online tutorials you can research to increase your chances of success, but there wasn’t time for that. My grandson chose to be Mario, of course, so I lined up as Yoshi, pressed the pedal to the metal (virtually) and roared ahead. Cartoon scenery flew past, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Again, no time. All I could do was keep my hands on the controls and gas on.
As I drove full speed around the bends and turns, my grandson frantically hollered out suggestions. “Grandma, use your super blaster!” (Not it’s real name, I suspect.) “Throw your mushroom bomb!” I couldn’t do any of it. My hands were locked on the steering controls. I kept driving. I spun out on banana peels. I was blinded by squid ink. I fell into caverns, where luckily a hang glider appeared. (Thank you, game coders). There was a mockup of the track on the screen to my left, apparently telling me where I was and where my competitors were situated, but all I could do was hang on and drive until blessedly the FINISH sign appeared overhead.
The experience was both energizing and exhausting. For me, it was so intense that sometimes I forgot to breathe. While I recovered, it dawned on me that the feeling was familiar. That is what my life feels like much of the time. I get up and do the thing that’s in front of me and then do the next thing and the next thing until, sooner or later, the clock announces a FINISH to the day and I collapse onto the couch. I emotionally check my rankings, evaluate how I did with the challenge, make mental notes about future encounters, then go into suspended animation until the next day, when I do it all over again.
When I get up in the morning, I have a clear goal. I am revved up and ready to hit the track. But then, the universe throws a banana peel into the mix, my hair dryer dies, the tire pressure light goes on in my car, and I am temporarily sent spinning until the problem is fixed. Sometimes, I’m slowed by the squid ink of relationship glitches or waiting for test results, leaving me unable to see clearly where I’m headed, but I have to keep driving just the same. I slam into walls and I miss golden coin opportunities, but somehow, I get to the FINISH each day, a little bedraggled, sometimes white-knuckled, but I get there. Thank you, Game Coder.
Even with my crackups and failures, my grandson somehow believes I am a viable competitor. I suspect, however, that I am really most valuable as a good-natured loser, and there’s a place for that, too.
Maybe when I get older, my grandson can throw Miss Yoshi in the back seat of his sports coupe and I can just sit back and look at the scenery.
That, I’d be good at.
