I love landing in Chicago. Changing planes always blows for a million different reasons. But if you have to change planes, and I mean have to, this is the place you want to do it. O’Hare is modern and clean. It’s easy to navigate. There are plenty of good food options. And, best of all, the United terminal features a bona fide dinosaur skeleton.

I exited the plane and treated myself to a Jamba Juice. A bored Mexican man fixed a Mango-A-Go-Go smoothie for me. Then I found the dinosaur skeleton and peered at it for awhile. Drinking a smoothie while looking up at a dinosaur skeleton at the O’Hare International Airport has kind of become an informal holiday tradition for me. I do it every year.

Once my smoothie was gone and I’d enjoyed enough dinosaur, I reported to my gate for the next leg of my trip. The gate for this leg–the Chicago to Syracuse leg–was, as usual, located at the far-, no man’s land-end of the terminal, at one of those group-type gates, where all borderline-negligible flights always depart from.

I can always spot the Syracuse departure gate from a mile away. That’s because it’s the gate where all the Syracuse-type people are gathered. After all my years of flying home for Christmas, there’s a certain type of person who I can almost always recognize as being from the same general region–Upstate New York–as I am from. Maybe there’s something in the air we collectively breathed in, or the water we drank, or the lakes we swam in, or the malls we frequented (Syracuse has many malls) during our formative years that makes it easy for us to recognize each other.

The Syracuse people always seem a little more tired and worn out than the rest of the people at the airport. Their clothing seems faded. Some look like they haven’t been living well; others look like they’re on the cusp of outright defeat. There’s always the gaunt musician with the guitar case and the threadbare denim jacket and the flyblown hair. There’s always the potbellied salesman with the golf shirt stuffed into the front of his pants and the Bluetooth headset in his ear. There’s always the young, tired mom wearing the bleached out S.U. sweatshirt and holding her crying baby.

Ah, Syracuse people.

On paper, maybe these people sound like people who could be boarding planes to anywhere. But I’m telling you, in practice, there’s something about these people that always seems so disappointingly familiar to me, like I’ve seen them all before, and will no doubt see them all again. And they’re probably thinking the exact same thing about me. Oh jesus, they probably think. Here comes the weird nervous guy with the squinty eyes and cheap New Balance sneakers, carrying his five million bags again, right on schedule. What the hell does he need all those damn bags for anyway?

I joined the other Syracuse-bound passengers at our group gate, wading into their midst. The mom cleared one of her bags off a seat for me; the Bluetooth-wearing salesman gave me a nod.  The flight, we are told over the P.A., was on time. I texted my mother this information. She texted back to inform me that she and my dad were already on their way to the airport in Syracuse. Which was alarming, since it was only a one hour drive to the airport, and I wouldn’t be there for at least another two, maybe two and a half hours.

Then we were informed via P.A. that the flight might be delayed. A series of groans went up in the Syracuse section. A few  minutes after that we were told that, because the de-icing equipment on the plane was malfunctioning, our flight could be cancelled outright. A series of even more dramatic groans and gasps went up. The pale, tired-faced Syracuse-bound passengers suddenly looked even more pale and tired-faced than they had before. I glimpsed myself in the black mirror of the nearby terminal window and noticed, to my chagrin, how much my own pale, tired face looks like it belonged with these people. I seemed right at home with these groaners.

I texted my mom that the flight might not fly at all tonight. I told her to turn around and go back home, that I didn’t want her and my dad waiting at the airport all night for a flight that might never come in.

She reluctantly agreed to do so. I pictured them pulling a u-turn, driving their Kia back home, back to my brother’s house in the snowy woods. On December 22nd at 11 p.m. at Gate 4/5/6 in the United terminal, as the airport seemed to be clearing out for the night and the shops were being shuttered one by one, I began to make my peace with the notion of having to spend the night here–just me, my fellow Central New Yorkers, and that toothy dinosaur skeleton, which, at this late hour, seemed much more menacing than it had a few hours earlier.

Moving on now to level 2-2. This is what I’m working with: three skinny elevators, one mostly useless ladder, one mostly useless spring, one inevitably important switch, one beetle-type enemy patrolling the area, Pauline’s screams (which sound less like screams and more like someone blowing through a wax paper-covered comb), and a key and a door. Let’s go.

Only two of the elevators are actually working at the start of the level, both of which are the ones on the righthand side of the screen. And they are descending, which is not helpful, since the exit door is at the very top of the level. Hitting the switch at center of the level causes the stalled-out left-most elevator to start working, and this one–glory be–is ascending. This elevator, same way that your dreams were always your ticket out in the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme song, is my ticket out of this level.

The tricky part is getting to the key, which is perched on a high ledge just right of the pair of descending elevators. Using the same middle area where I flipped the switch, I need to board the first descending elevator and ride it down to another small ledge. Once I am safely on the small ledge, I need to jump up, as high as I can, to the next elevator, landing at its highest possible point in its descent, which will hopefully be just high enough to allow me to quickly make a second, follow-up jump up to the key. In other words, I need to use two descending contraptions to somehow get to something that’s just out of my reach.

Maybe I’m distracted by the snow that’s falling this morning–the first snow we’ve seen all year in downtown Vancouver (I’m never happier than when I’m sitting at my desk writing and drinking a cup of coffee while snow is falling outside my window)–but I mistime a jump and Mario plummets to his doom. He falls so hard and so fast that there is no leg-twitching animation; there is no “hey, maybe he’ll live” moment, like I’ve experienced in previous falls. The game rolls out its “that’s all folks/game over” theme as quickly as I’ve ever heard it rolled out before.

So I run through the whole thing again–avoid beetle, hit switch, attempt jump one, reach platform, attempt jump two–and this time I manage to reach the key. The hoisting-the-key-above-my-head moment has become my favorite moment in the game. I love it because I love the sight of Mario will his arms in the air, in what looks like a victory pose. It’s also the moment when I can feel momentum definitively shift in my favor. With the key in hand, we all know now that it’s only a matter of time before it’s all over.

I ride one of the two descending elevators back to the bottom of the level, cross all the way to the lefthand/ascending elevator, note the location of the hustling beetle before boarding the elevator, then board. The key and I ride the elevator to the top of the level, to certain glory. The beetle, making far better time than I’d anticipated, confronts me on the top tier, just left of the door. I time the jump right, my shoes barely clearing the beetle’s back, then deliver the key to the door. I put down the 3DS and brush the invisible dust from my hands like people do when they are showing each other the international symbol for “I’m Done With That.” And voila: level 2-2 is finished, folks.