Having the Clockwork Orange eye-spreader thing in my eye feels as if an oversized butterfly with sandpaper for wings has flown into my eye and decided to breakdance there. No, it is not a nice feeling. But I knew, in advance, that it would not be a nice feeling. So what I keep telling myself once the eye-spreader is in is this: The sooner I make my peace with letting the butterfly do its breakdance, the sooner this will be over. Also, if you are contemplating having corrective eye surgery, do yourself a favor: move on with your day and do not subject yourself to the rest of this post. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

I try to relax into the moment. I try to go with it. The more I go with it, I tell myself, the better the results will be. I have this fantasy that the surgery will go so amazingly well that I will be transformed into a kind of vision-blessed superhero, a mutant who will be brought on missions because I will be The Guy Who Can See Pretty Much Anything. I picture myself standing on a mountaintop with my fellow superheroes, gazing with a furrowed brow across the miles. “What is it that you see, Eye-man?” they would ask (jury is still out on my superhero name, by the way), and I would say something cryptic like, “I see things that no mere human could, or should, ever be able see.”

But, right now, what I want is this: I want the butterfly out of my eye. I wince. I try to turn my head. None of this feels natural, or right. The doctor tells me that he is putting numbing drops into my eye. The drops burn for a few seconds, and then I feel nothing. Then he says something like, “Now I’m going to scrape away a bit of tissue,” but what he is really saying is, “Now I am going to take this sharp object, a scalpel, an object which should never be within three feet of your goddamn eye let alone right in your eye, and I am going to stick it right into your eye. Ready?”

I see the scalpel–a blurry, triangle-shaped object–coming towards my eye. I think, Hey, that’s a scalpel coming towards my eye. Shouldn’t I be doing something about this? The blurry triangle makes a few quick side to side motions.

And then the laser starts up. A red light is shining into my eye. To my surprise, I don’t feel anything. Nothing at all. After a few zaps of the laser, I begin to notice a smell in the room. I wonder if one of the technicians is burning raisin toast in a nearby kitchen. I love raisin toast so much, I think. Then I realize that the burning smell is not raisin toast. The burning smell is coming from my right eye. The burning smell is the smell of my eye being seared by a high-voltage laser. I feel my lunch–a food court cheeseburger–come up into my throat. I promptly send it back down where it belongs.

And lo, it is time for today’s level: 1-1. We’ve finally left behind the construction site motif of the first four levels and arrived at a new series of levels which the game refers to as “Big City.” During the opening moments of the first “new” level–and by new, I mean that this is the first level in the game that is not based on any of the levels found in the arcade version of Donkey Kong–Kong trots across the bottom of the screen with Pauline over his shoulder. He opens a tiny door, then proceeds to cram himself and Pauline through the entryway. He gets stuck for a few brief seconds, his butt wiggling like a couple of birthday balloons, before he finally disappears inside and slams the door behind him.

Two things worth noting here: 1. this level introduces a new locked door-key dynamic. Instead of scampering to the top of whatever structure Kong was perched on to solve the level, I now must retrieve a key and bring it back to this locked door; 2. the key, as tall as Mario, is the kind of hyperbolic representation of a key that’s only found in videogames.

Also: Kong and Pauline, presumably behind that locked door, are not visible during this level. Let’s hope Kong is being a gentleman in there.

There are two bipedal enemies patrolling the area. They aren’t as menacing as the barrels or anthropomorphic fireballs were in previous levels. They look like two creatures who have dressed up as enemies for Halloween and have inadvertently wandered into this game. I almost feel bad for these two idiots.

I attempt to leap over one of the enemies and wind up landing on top of his head. Game over, right? No! Wrong! To my surprise, touching the enemy on the head does not result in an instant death/do-over. In fact, I appear to be quite safe on top of the enemy’s head. He continues his left-right patrol, only now he is wearing me like a hat. Ha, ha!

There’s also a trash can here, which I can stand on, though I have no idea why it is here. I jump over it a few times, then stand on it for about five seconds, before moving on. And there is a rising-falling fireball which has the word OIL printed on it. I have no idea why the game’s makers felt it was necessary to include the word OIL on this object, as from its appearance I can clearly see that it is oily and dangerous.

I gather an umbrella and a rivet (or is it a ring?) for bonus points enroute to the key. When I reach the key, I have no idea what to do with the key, until I hit the B button. Mario hoists the key onto his head. I return to the door at the very bottom of the level. I hit the B button again, which causes Mario to put the key into the lock. I disappear inside, and voila, level 1-1 is in the books.