[Wondering why I’m playing 101 levels of Donkey Kong in 101 days? Get yourself up to speed by going back to Day 1.  Better now? Carry on.]

I packed up my suitcase, then headed down to the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express to meet up with my father. Alone in the elevator, I fiddled endlessly with my jacket collar. I tried in vain to pat down the parts of my hair that were still sticking up. I made routine mortgage payments and sported a bit of gray in my hair; I even had my prostate examined on an annual basis. Indeed, I had the earmarks of a grown man, yet I still got as nervous as a schoolgirl around my father for some reason.

He built houses for a living when he was younger, working with a small group of men who always smelled like McDonald’s coffee and stale beer. Once, when I was very young, my mom drove me to one of the houses that my dad was working on. I found him inside the half-built house, hanging sheetrock on the walls. There was a battery powered transistor radio tuned to an AM station playing near his work area. A popular song called “Watching Scotty Grow” by Bobby Goldsboro came out of the tinny speaker. As my dad continued to work, he started to sing along with parts of the song:

You can have your TV and your nightclubs/And you can have your drive-in picture show/I’ll stay here with my little man near, we’ll listen to the radio/Biding my time and watching Scotty grow

Even now, listening to it, is still the best thing in the world.

As I grew older and taller, and as I developed interests that he didn’t necessarily understand (videogames, Mad Magazine, VIC-20 computers, etc.), I must have become so foreign and strange to him. He lashed out at me, in the typical Great Santini ways that dads do. This only made us both more foreign to one another. In later years, once I’d grown in power, once I had money and independence, he and I went at it whenever we saw one another, round and round, not unlike the way that Sauron and Saruman go at it in The Fellowship of the Ring.

As the elevator reached the lobby, I puffed up my chest and rose to my full height. The doors opened. And there he was, standing at the counter, flirting with the plus-sized clerk, his hair still combed into a perfect rooster-tail pompadour. He smiled a big smile when he saw me. He seemed genuinely happy to see me. “Hi Scott,” he said.

Now it’s time for me to make a run at level 4-3. Today’s level introduces us to a new “enemy”: a depressed-looking monkey who moves back on a platform with its flaccid, depressed tail hanging down below. The tail, of course, is more than a mere tail; it also functions as a kind of moving vine which I can use. My start point is a small platform underneath a regular non-monkey tail vine all the way on the righthand side of a horizontal gameplay area that occupies two full screens. At the bottom of the screen is a body of water that is constantly being patrolled by a pair of menacing fish. Those things will kill you. I know, because I fell in once, and they killed me.

I grab the vine above my head and climb it until I’m at the same height as the monkey’s tail. When the monkey’s tail is close enough, I let go of the regular vine and take hold of the monkey tail. As the monkey continues its patrol, I hitch a ride on its tail. Yes, this is another one of those only-in-games ladybug riding-type moments when I think, Ha, ha, I’m riding a monkey’s tail!

Once I’ve gone as far as the tail can take me, I notice a spring located on a platform below. Before the monkey makes its turn and marches off in the other direction, I let go and land on the spring below. This is the sound that comes out of my 3DS: sproiiinnggg. The height I get from the bounce carries me all the way up to another non-moving vine. Again, I climb until I’m at the same height of–get this–not one but two monkey tails. Once it’s within range, I grab the first one, then wait for it to carry me to the second tail. Once the Tail Two is within range, I transition to it. This tail takes me to the edge of this second platform, which brings me within range of four more regular vines.

I use the vines to reach the key, which is located on a tiny platform next to the rightmost vine. I grab it, then carefully pinball my way down through a series of small platforms, careful not to get to close to the hermit crab (yes, there’s a hermit crab) with its death-dealing extending arm-claw. I pop the key into the lock, and that’s the end of the most creature-packed level we’ve encountered so far, people. For the record, it featured: three depressed (but inadvertently helpful) monkeys, one hermit crab, and a pair of man/Mario-eating fish.