Mr. Kaufman informed me that I had indeed won first prize, which was a one-minute shopping spree through the Zayre department store. The spree was scheduled for the following Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. sharp, before the store opened its doors for the day. I felt like I was receiving a phone call from Willy Wonka himself, personally inviting me to his chocolate factory. After I hung up the phone, my father fixed his famous pancakes for breakfast as a way of congratulating me. His not-so-secret secret ingredient: he added a few drops of vanilla to the batter when no one was looking. I tried to eat my share of the victory pancakes, but I was too sick with excitement that morning to hold down any solid foods.

Nothing like this had ever happened to our family before. We never won anything. I remember one night a couple of years earlier when a man called our house looking for my father. He got on the phone with the man. I had never seen my dad have a phone conversation that lasted longer than two minutes, yet he stayed on the phone with this man for quite awhile. “I see,” my dad said into the phone. “Well, that sounds great to me.” There was a sense of growing excitement in the house, an optimism that was remarkably different from the default sour mood. We gathered in the kitchen to see what was going on. Dad eventually covered up the receiver on the phone and whispered to us, “We’ve won something. I think it’s a sailboat.”

The man on the other end of the line explained to my father than in order to get him his sailboat—a 37-foot Chris Craft Apache, a real beauty—he’d need to fill out some paperwork for my father. This paperwork, of course, would require my dad to give him his checking account number over the phone. I remember my father saying into the phone, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable doing that.”

My dad asked the man if he could think about it and ring him back. The man told him that he could not wait, that if my father didn’t claim his prize at that very moment, they’d have to do another drawing and give away the 37-foot Chris Craft Apache to someone else. My father asked the man to hold on. Then he set the phone down on the counter and turned to us, not because he didn’t know what to do here (this was obviously a criminal at work) but because I think he wanted to prolong the moment, and prolong the possibility that we were winners—even if it was only the illusion of being winners—for a few seconds longer.

Let’s talk about stage 8-6. For some reason today’s stage made me feel like a contestant on a gameshow called “Watch Your Step!” I can practically hear the studio audience screaming the words “WATCH! YOUR! STEP!” leaving those brief, dramatic pauses between each word. This stage has a playful-grim quality that gameshows typically have. Your biggest concern in today’s stage: four rising-falling monoliths, most of which are hidden offscreen at the very top of the stage. These things travel at alarming speeds, and will come at you out of nowhere. Keep an eye on the skies in this stage, people—be on the lookout for any openings in the structures above you, because an opening usually means a monolith is coming through—or else you’ll wind up as flat as the morning paper.

The key is in the top lefthand corner of the stage and the exit door is in the bottom righthand corner. The level opens with you standing next to an upwardly mobile elevator. Climb aboard, but take care to avoid the crab-thing that’s traveling in counterclockwise circles. He remains a nuisance for most of today’s stage, so we’ll be seeing him again soon. (I hated him so much that I even attempted to kill him with a key-toss at one point. He is, apparently, impervious to key tosses. Stupid crab.) At the top of the elevator’s path, step off and pull the switch in the small alcove. This reverses the two elevators in the stage, meaning the one you rode up here, past the circling crab, is now going down, and a second elevator further to your right is now moving up. Head for that second elevator now.

Before taking elevator two up, note the nearby exit door. It’s in a small cave-like area just below you, and it features not one but two rising-falling monoliths, which fall from different heights (one is a short faller, the other is a long faller). There is a 1-Up heart in here, but it’s hidden behind the short-faller. It’s worth going after, because getting the 1-Up turns this into yet another zero-sum situation. As always, if you make a mistake from here on out, you aren’t digging into your Mario reserves; you’re merely using the 1-Up you just picked up. Which is so cool.

Either way, take elevator two up to the very top of today’s stage. Up here you’ll find a second switch. Pushing it reverses the elevators again, meaning the elevator you just stepped off of will now be going down, which is the direction you want it to go in, since you eventually need to retrace your steps with the key. Unfortunately, it also lowers a steel shutter, sealing off the little cave area where the exit door is located. Rats.

Head to the left, taking care to avoid the rising-falling monolith–I confess, this monolith got me a few times this morning–and grab the key, which is tucked away in a little dead-end just below you. Once you have the key, head back to elevator two, ride it down, and head all the way back to Home of the Circling Crab. You need to ride elevator one back to the first switch, set the key down, and pull the switch again. This switch-pull reverses the elevators again, and also retracts the steel shutter. And yes, that is the last switch you’ll have to pull today.

Grab the key again and head for the exit. Again, be extra vigilant when entering the exit area. Those monoliths can undo all of your good work in a split-second. When the time is right, head for the exit door. And day 82 is in the books, folks.