The best wrestling team in the Tri-Valley league, by far, was Canastota. Canastota, for the record, is a small town located just off the New York State Thruway in Central New York. It’s where the International Boxing Hall of Fame is located. Our wrestling team had not come close to beating Canastota in 20 years. We referred to Canastota as “the onion pickers,” because of a series of robust onion fields that grew just outside of their town and because this was the best zinger we could come up with.

We wrestled Canastota at home that year on a snowy February night. Everyone–with few exceptions–simply went out onto the mat and accepted their pins. Our team had endured yet another annual humiliating loss at the hands of the onion pickers. Even Mike Francisco, after his recent string of victories, was pinned alarmingly fast that night.

Once it was all over, our team huddled together in the  locker room and spoke in jittery whispers, the way survivors no doubt do after an F4 tornado has blown through their burg. We kept saying things like, “Did you see their 154-pounder?” and, “Where do you even learn to do a move like that?”

After the bout, the Canastota team, with none of the showboating that we typically engaged in after our wins, simply got dressed, then quietly boarded their team bus and vanished into the night. “It was like they were never even here,” one of my teammates said.

Mike Francisco hadn’t seemed like himself at all that night. He was quiet, out of sorts. When I looked for him in the cafeteria the next day, he was nowhere to be found. A few nights later, in the locker room just before our bout against Little Falls, I found Mike privately taking peaks his beloved beaver Polaroid.

I tapped him on the shoulder. His eyes were red. I asked him what was going on.

“It’s Kim,” he said. “She broke up with me.” He held up the Polaroid for me to look at it. It was still blurry, still brown-ish and beige-y. “How am I supposed to go on living without this?” he asked.

I didn’t have an answer for him.

Level 3-4. Yet another showdown with Donkey Kong has arrived, people. “Regular” levels are merely about me giving chase to Kong and Pauline, but “showdown” levels are about me finding my way through a series of hazards that Donkey Kong has supposedly cooked up just for me. As a result, these levels always feel more personal for me. I get a little more jazzed up when I play them.

Today’s level has a clockwork-like rhythm to it, with D.K. operating one of those ball-on-a-stick switches from his perch at the very top of the level. His switch opens and closes various doors and shutters at various times, and also seems to effect the direction that conveyer belts move. There’s a shutter separating Pauline and D.K. from the rest of the level, which likely can only be opened by one of the two switches that I spot on the far side of the level.

In order to reach those switches, I need to do the following: 1. avoid the large, monolithic stone that falls to the ground with a thud again and again, and that will flatten Mario (this happened to me once; he literally turns into a piece of Mario-shaped paper as the “game over” theme plays); 2. ride the large, clockwise moving, kidney bean-shaped ferris wheel; 3. ride the dual moving platforms that move along a J-shaped path.

I do these things, making my way to the far righthand side of the level. Once I’ve safely arrived, my feet back on solid ground again, I climb a ladder. Here, in the middle tier, is a small room that is filled with two more of the type of monolithic stones seen at the start of the level. There is a switch–call it switch one–on the far side of this room, but trying to traverse this room only results in pain and suffering for me and Mario.

A second switch–switch two–is located on the tier above this one. I climb a nearby ladder to reach it. Once I pull switch two, a gateway stretches across the middle tier, corralling the pair of falling stones into the upper half of the middle tier and creating a safe passageway for me to reach switch one at the far end of the room.

I descend the ladder, cross the middle tier–which happens to be a convey belt, so crossing it, depending on which way D.K. has pulled his switch, can sometimes feel like you’re walking upstream through a strong current–then I pull switch one. As I suspected, this does indeed open the shutter separating Pauline from the rest of the level. But who knows how long it will stay open? Now it’s time for me to retrace my steps, and to hustle while doing so.

Fact: I tend to die a lot during these retrace-your-steps moments in levels. I get overconfident. I feel like I’ve broken the level’s back. I’m not as careful, or as nervous, when it’s time to make jumps that I’ve already made. What I do is this: I’ve gotten in the habit of telling myself to slow it down, to take my time, to wait for the next platform instead of making a risky jump. Sometimes I even say the words, “Slow down, Scott. What’s the big hurry? Make your jumps count, buddy.”

Yes, I privately refer to myself as “buddy” on occasion. What of it?

There is one especially tricky part near the end of this level: as I am riding the kidney bean-shaped ferris wheel to what I hope will be glory, the rate at which the ferris wheel platforms move is timed so that I am automatically on a collision course with the falling monolithic stone. This results in three, maybe four do-overs, until I decide that my only hope is to throw myself off the ferris wheel from a risky height. Mario falls. The stone does not hit him. He climbs to his feet. And…he’s O.K.!

The stone pauses for a moment before it begins its slow ascent. I climb aboard and use the stone as an elevator, telling the stone in great detail how much I despise it during our few seconds of alone time. It takes me straight to the top of the level, where Pauline and I are very briefly reunited. End of level 3-4.

Final results for this jag of the game:

Level 3-1: 131 seconds.

Level 3-2: 115 seconds.

Level 3-3: 126 seconds.

Level 3-4: 95 seconds.

Total 467 seconds. Number of Marios in my Mario tank: 31 (!). Up next: level 3-5.