For Christmas a couple years earlier, my mom and dad had given me a reading lamp that clipped to the headboard of my bed. I loved that reading lamp so much. At night, after dinner, I’d sometimes go to my room, shut the door, and get under the blankets and read. Because our house was heated by a woodstove, having the door closed to my room meant that I was literally cut off from the heat. I didn’t mind. The colder the room got, the more blankets, afghans and quilts I’d pile on top of myself.

I read the usual stuff: Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Tolkien, Mark Twain, Jack London, etc. But I also read Judy Blume, because I thought her books would help me understand girls better. (They did.) I read all of Stephen King’s books. I remember reading It on the school bus for months and just loving every page of it. Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon was, I was certain at the time, the best book I would ever read. It was the first book that I read multiple times. And I read Peter Benchley’s Jaws, because my parents refused to take me to see the movie, and because there was a very tiny nude woman on the book’s cover who I was forever peering at.

As I walked out onto the wrestling mat that night to meet my opponent, that’s what I was thinking about: my bed at home, the warmth that my reading lamp gave off in the cold room, and that poor, tiny nude woman who was forever swimming her way across the cover of Jaws, completely oblivious of the fact that her doom was only seconds away. Sometimes, if I stared at her for too long, I’d have to stave off the urge to shout, “Look out!” or, “He’s right below you!” or, “Lady!” None of my insane shouting would ever do her any good. What was even more depressing, I realized, was that the woman and the shark were forever locked in a limbo of sorts. The two of them would never have any true resolution. They’d always be frozen there, on their collision course, without an outcome.

Sometimes, I’ve come to realize, it’s nice to have an outcome, even it’s not the outcome you’d hoped it would be.

The referee instructed my opponent and me to shake hands. He was a big one–a broad fellow with a splash of acne across his shoulders–though he was not the biggest heavyweight I’d wrestled that season. One thing was clear: this guy was not a forfeit collector, like I was. This guy was here to wrestle. I could tell that from his withering handshake.

After the whistle, with my head still preoccupied with the woman on the Jaws book cover, my opponent took me down, then spun around behind me. I was on all fours now. He squared his weight on top of me, then methodically began breaking down my limbs. He chopped out my arms. Then he chopped out my legs. Only a minute had elapsed in our bout, and already I was flat on my stomach, breathing heavily–though not hyperventilating, thank god–and in more than a little trouble.

“Get out of there, Jones!” the coach kept yelling from the mat’s edge.

I managed to get my arms underneath me, then my legs. I was rebuilding what my opponent had broken down. I could sense his disappointment, sense his panic that he was letting me get away from him. I unhooked his hands from around my stomach, did a hip-slide maneuver which allowed me to put some physical distance between the two of us, and suddenly, we were both back on our feet and circling each other again, like a pair of caged bears.

Then the referee was blowing his whistle and prematurely halting the match for some reason. A doctor was being called to the mat. My opponent, I could see now, had somehow sustained a bloody nose during my escape. While the doctor dabbed at his face, I looked at the gym around me. It was packed to the rafters with the hometown Little Falls fans, all of them staring at me as if they’d wish I would die, or failing that, that I would poop my pants and go home. That actually happened on occasion in wrestling, on all levels: someone would poop his singlet during the match and the match would be over, and the pooper would be sent home with a lifetime’s supply of humiliation.

I lived in fear of this.

We all did.

But I would not poop my singlet that night. I would not hyperventilate. Once the match resumed, I used an arm drag to take him down. It worked like this: 1. grab the wrist, 2. pull your opponent towards you, 3. once he’s off balance, go for the legs. When he was on the mat, I went to work. Now, I was the one burdening him with my weight. All those countless hours sucking air in the hideous wrestling room? All those repetitive, dead-dull drills? Apparently, all that stuff had seeped into my DNA somehow. Without thinking, I worked my opponent into a cradle–one arm behind his neck, the other behind one of his knees–and I squeezed and rocked him backwards, trying to close the gap between his knee and his forehead, and more importantly, trying to get both of his acne-covered shoulders on the mat.

I squeezed tighter. He struggled at first, kicking his legs, trying to get his hips off the mat, trying to free himself. But then something changed in him. I could feel it. I felt him relaxing now. I felt him letting go in my arms. He was conceding defeat.

Once the ref slapped the mat next to our heads, the crowd let out an agonized “No!” which was punctuated by one final, humble sounding “bleat” from the air horn, which sounded like this: MEERRTT.

Little Falls had been defeated.

When I walked off the mat, my victory secure, and the team’s victory secure, my teammates half mobbed me and half molested me, because that’s how wrestlers show their appreciation for one another, by always working a little molesting into their celebrating. As I said, we were an extremely perverted bunch. Our coach, who was also an English teacher, quieted everyone so that he could deliver some pithy post-match words. “Tonight, men,” he said quietly, “there is a true hero in our midst.”

And then he looked in my direction. And then he smiled.

Level 3-6. One of the many great Donkey Kong truisms that I’ve learned from the 30 levels I’ve traversed so far is this: should one encounter an enemy and/or a pair of enemies who appear to be stuck on a narrow ledge next to a sharpangle-filled pit, one must find a portable bridge, then deploy said bridge across the pit. This sets that enemy, or pairs of enemies, free. If you do not do this, the enemies will simply stand there, bumping into one another like a couple of bargain-dazed Wal-mart shoppers, clogging up a passageway that you will otherwise need to pass through at some point.

So, in today’s level, when I spy a pair of bidpedal turtles stuck on a ledge high above and a do-it-yourself portable bridge power-up nearby, following the above-mentioned truism, I know what to do. The temporary,  makeshift bridge, once it has run its course, allows these two goons to roam freely now, unclogging the passageway. Also, as a bonus, I know has a place, or places to land, i.e. on their hollow heads, while crossing the sharpangle pit.

Sweet.

But before I can enjoy any head-jumping on that particular level, there is another, even larger sharpangle pit that I must first cross on the level below. I can’t use the same D.I.Y. bridge that I used on the turtles–it’s much too far away to be physically possible. (Mario’s little legs could never run all the way from triggering the power-up to the bridge itself before the bridges expires.)

There is, however, a second D.I.Y. bridge power-up next to a long ladder on the lefthand side of the screen. This one is tricky to reach, because you kind of have to jump sideways off the ladder in order to trigger it. Once it’s triggered, and once I’ve placed it across sharpangle pit number two, I retake control of Mario, who, after basically throwing himself off the ladder to reach the power-up, has fallen down to the base of the ladder. Back on my feet, I begin to climb the ladder that I, only seconds ago, had thrown myself off of with abandon. Meanwhile, the makeshift bridge’s cheery tick-tock song is running its course. I’ve got to hustle.

At the top of the ladder, with only seconds to spare now before the bridge vanishes, I make a couple of careful downward movements (see the attached diagram) that could be described as “skillful falls.” At the bottom, I hit the still-intact bridge running, and once the last tick-tock in the song plays, I jump in the air.

I am in midair when the bridge begins to retract, collapsing in on itself beneath me. It’s official: this is today’s “Moment of Great Tension.”

Fortunately, I have applied just the right amount of mustard to the jump button, and Mario makes it all the way across. After a brief Murtagh moment where I picture Mario, doubled over and mopping his damp brow while saying the words, “I’m getting too old for this sh*t,” I climb the ladder on the right of the screen. I use the wandering turtles–specifically their hollow heads–as resting places/platforms to reach the key above them. With the key now on my person, I make a graceful leap to the doorway in the top right. Click, the key goes into the lock, and everyone is now free to move on with his day.