i no know

(Before)








(After)

I used to play Nintendo for so many hours that I developed button shaped blisters on my thumbs. I carried this hard earned reward with pride, showing the blisters off to all my friends and challenging them to Nintendo duels. My mother, seeing no other admirable accomplishment in me to show off to friends and aunts, had me complete Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  in under an hour for them. I did it in 40 minutes. I still look at that as the high point in my life.  Although, now I realize that my mother probably wasn't showing off my elite gaming skills.  She was just trying to get me out of the way so that she could continue having more adult, important conversations with everyone else.   Now she wonders why I never really grew up.

Anyway, the reason why I mention this isn't to brag to you all about how great I am at Ninja Turtles.  Or Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers 2.  Or even Zelda. No, not even Mega Man 2.  I'm writing this entry to make a confession.  (As well as to recommend that you all click those links and try to beat my high scores in each game.  I dare you.)

I think it's important that you all know that I'm a fraud.

After my golden years of championing the little boy next door in Nintendo matches, beating my best friend at Super Mario World on her Super Nintendo so many times that she wouldn't let me come over any more, and making my older cousin break down in tears because I wouldn't let him play Paperboy with me, Nintendo eventually became outdated. Of course I still continued to play.  But when I went over to friends' houses to play on the new systems, I was out of practice.

Nintendo had been my entire life up until then.  Once realizing that I'd become the friend that nobody wants to play with, because she'll just accidentally jump off a cliff every time, I was devastated.  I tried convincing them that I could do better.  That I'd turn from my suicidal ways.  It was no use. Dejected, I stayed at home and fell back into the lesser disciplines of literature and art. 

My parents took pity on me years later and bought me a Game Gear.  They were the super wicked Sega version of Nintendo's crappy Gameboy.  For some reason, all the kids felt the need to resort to black and white crap graphics in Pokemon instead of the awesomeness that was Ecco the Dolphin. Alone in my undying devotion to all things superior in the gaming industry (namely, GameGear) I continued in my noble mission of beating every game within my grasp.  Even if it meant having no one around to recognize my valiant accomplishments.

My life as a video game addict continued like this for years to come.  Every time my system became extremely outdated, my parents would buy me the cheaper, less popular console that came out the year before.  I'm not saying that I'm not appreciative of these gifts.  Looking back, I'd still go with Playstation over N64.  I'm merely stating that I was no longer recognized as the video game mastermind that I once was.

Eventually, I stopped buying systems completely.  I still had my PS2 to tide me over whenever I experienced video game withdrawal, but for the most part, I'd recognized that companionship was vital to the enjoyment of completing a game for the first time.  Even still, I frequently played PC games like FFVII and the text based RPG that I'm still hacking away at today, Dragonrealms.  I even joined a gaming chatroom - #fret. The PC games and half hearted attempts at battling my way through Spyro and Kingdom Hearts for the PS weren't enough to put me on par with the Nintendo savvy experts like anotherdupa , capheine ,  or mullenkamp . 

I lied my way through my years in the chatroom, steering clear of conversations about upcoming games or current consoles.  I used current video game avatars as my LJ icon that I picked up from graphics communities, but when asked who they were, I was embarrassed to have to google search for hours before giving an answer.  #fret served as more of an outlet to dwell on the talented video game guru that I once was.  It also awakened me that were were far more dedicated gamers out there than myself.  I fell into a sort of hopelessness about it all.

My mom tried getting me back into my gaming ways last Christmas by purchasing a Nintendo Wii and a Nintendo DS for both me and my sister.  At first the Wii owned all of my attention.  Zelda won my heart over once again.  But  when I moved out and took nothing but the neglected DS with me, I couldn't bring myself to choosing video games over homework.  My friends in real life still see me as a video game champ.  People from elementary are still adding me on Facebook and asking me how my video game addiction ever played out.  Of course I still play the part.  Nintendo is still my first love and it's hard to completely dismiss that. 

I feel that it's finally time to come clean about my true identity as a failed video game addict.

I'm on the road to recovery as we speak.  World of Warcraft helped get me back on my feet.  After realizing how time consuming it was, Boyfriend made the decision to uninstall the game from our computers.  When one door closes, another one opens.  We realized that we were both semi-proud owners of the Nintendo DS.  We began trading pokemon like mad.  Mixing berries together, dueling one another, creating underground fortresses and stealing each others' flags.  It was pure madness! 

Then a rare opportunity arose.  As Boyfriend works at a large big name toy store, he receives a 15% discount off of all consoles. For Christmas this year, we're considering pitching in together and buying ourselves an X-Box. I think this would be the one big push that I need.  I've been doing nothing but watching PS3 and X-Box 360 comparison videos since school ended.  X-Box wins every time.  Maybe I'd get to the point where once again.. I win every time.  

Being a loser is only tolerable for so long. Eventually you have to get good at something. 
Even if it is a couch potato hobby.

There's a sign in the elevator stating that we're only allowed artificial trees in the apartment. When I pointed it out to Boyfriend earlier this morning, we both shared sly grins with each other.

"I don't think they'll have a problem with our tree," he says.
"Unless it somehow gets dried on to the window."
"Do you think it will?"
"No."

We make our way off of the elevator and head to the laundry room.

"We could get a real tree. Just for the fun of it," he offers.
"We don't even have a vacuum." I reply. "There would be pine needles everywhere."
"That's true. I was just thinking about how fun it would be trying to hide it. We could hang it off of our balcony if someone did room inspections."
"You don't think the people below us would notice a tree hanging in front of their window?"
"No," he lies. "But if they did, we could always pull it back up inside the apartment again."

"I like our original idea better."
Boyfriend smirks. "Poor ghetto Christmas tree."


The plan is to draw it on to the sliding glass door with crayola window markers.
Then we might buy some cheap tinsel from the dollar store and tape that on over top.
I'm not sure how well it will turn out, but we're both pretty excited about it; if only to demonstrate how sad and deprived we were this holiday season. Maybe our families will take pity on us and send more presents.

"You're sure that you don't want to spend Christmas with your family in Vancouver?" I ask.
"No, I want to spend it with you."
"What will we do with no family around?"
"Whatever we want."

We're trying to think of really great things that we can do, that normally, if we were obligated with a family dinner, we wouldn't be able to.
So far.. we've just decided to play video games and go to the park.

We considered going ice skating, but I have this weird thing going on with my foot. It turns sideways whenever I wear skates. I just end up stranded in the middle of the ice, standing on the sides of my feet and waddling around like a penguin.

It also doesn't help that I have this ridiculous disease called Raynaud's Phenomenon. It seems like something that only old people get. Or people close to death. It means that I'm allergic to winter. When I get cold, my hands turn pasty white or Simpson yellow. I start yawning uncontrollably and sometimes pass out. I basically turn into a zombie. A zombie mixed with something that sleeps a lot. Dracula? Anyway, there's no known cure for it yet. Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry if you're curious about what it actually looks like.

So no skiing, ice skating, snowboarding, etc. This made growing up in a hockey town/snowboarding community really difficult. I'm not even supposed to be in the freezer section of grocery stores. When a long time friend of mine found out about my 'condition', he was so horrified that he took it upon himself to publish an article in the paper. "For some people, building a snowman could be a fun winter time activity. For others, it could mean death."

For the record, I wouldn't die from building a snowman. But I'd prefer doing something that didn't have the possibility of turning me into a zombie. I'd love to hear if you guys have any other fun (warm) activities for what we could do on Christmas!
Thanks!