Feeling more doomed and blind by the second, I rang the doctor’s office in the hope of procuring some answers and/or getting to yell at some people. I got a woman on the phone who spoke in either an Australian or English accent, I couldn’t be sure which. I tried yelling at her, but it didn’t work. Everything she said to me sounded like science fiction. (At one point she mentioned potentially putting tiny implants into my eyes to stimulate the tear ducts.) All of this, naturally, only made me feel more blind and sorry for myself. “Can’t I just come in and have someone look at my eyes?” I asked.

She said that I could come in, but that I’d have to hurry, because the office closed at five sharp. I hung up the phone, then called a cab. It was another dark and rainy night in Vancouver, making the already blurred-out world even blurrier. Blurry Christmas lights blinked everywhere. And, naturally, there was a Canucks game going on at the arena, so traffic was stop-and-go all the way across the city.

I arrived at the office door with only a minute or two to spare. The waiting room was empty, except for a couple who sat together on a nearby couch and argued quietly in what sounded like Russian. From what I could gather from my squints, the woman looked beautiful but tired, like all Russian women, and the man looked small and bald and wore a leather jacket that hung to his thighs and was a least two sizes too big for him.

She said something terse to him. He responded in a gentler tone, clearly trying to calm her. Even in my blinded state, I could tell that the man was afraid of this woman. I thought, Either they are having a lover’s quarrel or she too had been sorting laundry today and realized she was unable to match her socks. The man moved closer to her on the couch and tried to put his arms around her, which I recognized as a bold move. I quietly cheered him on. Go!, I thought. The woman bristled, but the man hung on, quite literally, not unlike a cartoon of a baby polar bear clinging to a small iceberg.

Then the woman sort of gave into the hug. She let out a sigh. There was a small amount of peace between them. Seeing, or rather squinting, at this bit of human drama for some reason soothed me more than any of my arsenal of expensive eye drops had.

A few moments later, I was in the examining room with the doctor, who was still wearing his surgical scrubs and his aloof attitude. He had me peer at an eye chart across the room. I could barely make out the huge “E” at the top. “You’re fine,” he said to me in a condescending tone, scratching something down on a notepad.

“I can’t even sort my own socks,” I said. “How is that fine?”

“When I had my procedure I was at the stage you were at, I was playing golf!”

I wanted to punch him in the nose. I couldn’t believe his arrogance. “You sure weren’t playing very well!” I said.

“You could drive right now, if you wanted to.”

“If I got behind the wheel right now, I’d mow down hordes of pedestrians,” I said. “They would lock me up.”

“You’d be fine,” he said.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“That I can’t help you with,” he said, turning back to his notes.

He told me to be patient. He told me that things would get better. In the interim, he’d have one of his assistants put the contact lenses back into my eyes, which, he said, should help with my vision.

Back down on the street with the contact lenses now in, I was still lost in a blur of rain and headlights. Christmas was only a few days away. I wondered if I should bow out of my trip home for the holidays. The last place I wanted my take my eyes just then was onboard the dry, recycled air of a 747. Beyond that, I didn’t want my family seeing me like this, in my compromised state. I knew, from experience, that they don’t accept vulnerability very well. The last place I wanted to be vulnerable was around them. The same way that A Nightmare on Elm Street’s burned-up villain Freddy Krueger feeds off of fear, my family seems to feed off of vulnerability. The more vulnerable you are, the more they grow in power.

Level-time, people. Now, I know that I’m only seven levels into this thing, but I confess, when I wake up in the morning I’m excited to get back to the game. In fact, it takes all of my gaming willpower not to start consuming multiple levels in a sitting. Note to self: gaming in smaller doses is a good, healthy way to game. An essential part of playing, or experiencing a game should include the time spent not playing a game. We should be thinking about the game during idle moments. We should leave enough time and space in our lives to feel the gravity of the game. And that brings me to the end of my pontificating for the day.

Today’s level, also known as 1-3, features not one but two clotheslines, one of which–the upper-tier clothesline–is electrified with a spark that always moves from left to right. On the very bottom of the level, in the righthand corner, is a couple of fireballs which are obscuring a bonus-points hat/sombrero. I grab the nearby hammer-time hammer, dispatch the fireballs, collect the hat/sombrero, then wait for the hammer effect to wear off (which seems, as usual, to take forever).

Then I climb up the power pole on the left side of the screen to the middle of the level. Here I find a platform that features a garbage can and one of the plodding enemies whose head I can ride, should I so choose. I leap onto the top of the garbage can and am genuinely surprised when the lid of the can lifts revealing a pair of shifty eyes. The can also grows feet, and as I stand on top it, it begins to slowly walk to the right. I like how the game slowly introduces elements, like the garbage can, then continues to evolve those elements–now it’s alive!–in the name of keeping me entertained and back on my heels. For a black-and-white Game Boy-era game, this thing certainly has a lot of style and attitude packed into it.

I collect the 1-up heart and the bonus-points umbrella from the middle tier, then grab the key from the platform on the far right. The tiny, moving platform on the upper tier will require a carefully timed jump in order for key-carrying Mario’s feet to land on it. Also: I’ve got that aforementioned spark to worry about at the very top of the level. With the spark nowhere in sight, I successfully make the jump. I ride the moving platform upwards and to the left, I keep my eyes peeled for the spark. At the platform’s apex at the very top of the level, I attempt a leap to the locked door located on the top right platform. To my surprise, I land, unscathed and un-zapped by the spark, which appears to be on a lunch break or something.

The key unlocks the door, Mario zips through, and level 1-3 is history, people.