One minute sounded like a pretty substantial amount of time to my 10-year-old brain. I thought of all the minutes I’d endured at school, the hands on the wall clock inching along at such a slow pace that sometimes I’d ask my teachers if perhaps the clock was in need of repair. I thought of the minutes I’d spent in the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices, re-reading the Highlights magazines I’d already read a hundred times, waiting for my allergy shots. I thought of the minutes I’d spent waiting for my favorite TV programs to come on, and the minutes I’d spent here, in the Zayre department store itself, being dragged along by my mother through Women’s Wear as she shopped for a dumb blouse.

But there are other kinds of minutes, minutes that were completely foreign to me, like the minute I once spent pushing a shopping cart through an empty department store in complete silence at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

“Thirty seconds!” Mr. Kaufman shouted before I’d even reached Housewares. How on earth had thirty seconds elapsed? My shopping spree was already half over and my cart was still completely empty. The place where the woks were supposed to be—my goal was to get a wok for my mom—now featured a selection of blenders. The hell with this, I thought, and I grabbed a blender and tossed it into the cart. “Twenty seconds!” Mr. Kaufman shouted.

I wheeled into Hardware, my feet briefly going out from under me thanks to the soles of my shoes, searching for the metric system socket set I’d promised my father. Of course, it also wasn’t where it had been the previous Saturday when my brother and I had mapped out the store. I rushed up and down the aisles, desperate to find it. “Fifteen seconds!” Mr. Kaufman yelled. I grabbed two expensive-looking hammers and threw them into the cart.

I looked at the contents of my cart—two hammers and a blender—and suddenly felt the crushing futility of this whole endeavor. This opportunity, which I was sure was going to be one of the highlights of my entire life, was slipping away from me, and I had no idea how to stop it from doing so. I’d thought about this moment non-stop for a full week, going over it again and again in my mind, fantasizing about it. I kept the map of the store’s floor-plan folded up in my pocket at all times, and I peered at it whenever I had a spare moment at school. I’d pictured myself pushing two, sometimes three shopping carts at the same time, all in a row like a train, each cart brimming with the store’s finest wares. I’d pictured myself finding the time during my spree to run into the store’s cafeteria and order a hot chocolate and french fries, cooly telling the counter lady that I’d be back in 30 seconds to pick up my order. I’d pictured my parents, who were not always the most emotive people in the world, two people who constantly “pinched pennies” as they said, jumping up and down and applauding wildly at the sight of my enormous haul of goods. I’d spent so much time and energy fantasizing about all the ways the spree could go right that I hadn’t even remotely considered the ways it could go wrong.

I numbly pushed my cart through the aisles on a trot, feeling like a fool. I was surrounded by things which could have belonged to me—all I had to do was sweep them into cart—yet nothing seemed right, nothing looked right, nothing felt right. I found myself in the Shoe Department, staring blankly at a bin of sneakers. What am I going to do with a bunch of sneakers? I thought, before pressing on. The Zayre department store, which I’d always loved, suddenly seemed like the most terrible place in the world.

“Ten seconds!” Mr. Kaufman shouted. That’s when I heard my brother’s voice calling out from across the store. “Get to Toys!” he bellowed. He was right. I had to get some toys or I’d never forgive myself. My dress shoes spun in place for a few seconds like Fred Flintstone trying to get his car moving.

Not only had the Toy Department been switched around, as my brother had rightly observed, but it also appeared that all of the more valuable toys had been removed from the shelves altogether (no doubt by the pair of dull-eyed stock boys). The Star Wars action figures? Gone. The Teddy Ruxpins? Gone. LEGO? Gone. The JO-DOOR 12 robots? Gone. All that was left on the shelves were board games like Candy Land and Sorry! and toys that my brother and I would derogatorily refer to as “baby stuff.”

I started blindly sweeping as much of this junk as I could into my cart. “Five seconds!” Mr. Kaufman boomed. I sped to the finish line, my dress shoes spinning like mad and my cart’s wheels squawking away. I’d barely crossed the length of electrical tape when Mr. Kaufman shouted the word, “Time!”

It’s time now for stage 8-10. I keep holding my breath, waiting for one of these homestretch stages to really push me, to be so difficult, so ridiculously challenging that it not only eats through my Mario reserves—which are currently hovering at an uncomfortably low 25 Marios (note to self: harvest Marios soon)—but also threatens to break my spirit, and make me question why I bothered to undertake this completely silly enterprise in the first place. Today’s stage didn’t do that to me. It’s by no means a cakewalk, but it is relatively underwhelming, considering that a mere 15 stages stand between me and the end of the game.

Gameplay is spread across a pair of vertical screens. On the left side of the screen is a very long ladder, which is the kind of ladder a circus acrobat might use to reach his trapeze. You begin the stage standing at the very top of a narrow, empty canyon. Across the canyon gap, on the left side of the screen, is a 1-Up heart. You’ll need to jump across the canyon, using the Fallers (I’m referring to the bricks which quiver for a moment before going into free-fall) in order to reach the 1-Up heart over there. As always, it’s worth the extra effort, since collecting the heart turns today’s stage into a zero-sum endeavor (in other words, your Mario reserves won’t take a hit should you die in today’s quest).

While you’re on the lefthand side of the screen you’ll notice a portable spring power-up suspended there in mid-air. Trigger it, then place it into the canyon below, near the key, which is tucked away on a small platform back on the righthand side of the canyon. Jump over to the key, collect it, then hurl yourself into the canyon. Be prepared to call upon all of the Skillful Falling techniques you’ve learned up to this point in the game.

The canyon is littered with portable spring power-ups. What you want to do is always make sure that you’re falling towards a subsequent portable spring power-up. When you trigger one during your fall, place it directly beneath the falling Mario, effectively breaking his fall. You’ll wind up doing this at least three times during your descent to the bottom of the canyon. And you will, at some point, become separated from the key. It’s inevitable. My advice: don’t panice. Don’t worry about the key if (and when) you lose it—just keep falling, and keep triggering those portable springs along the way.

Once you’re at the bottom of the canyon, it’s time to collect the key. If it has fallen onto solid ground, you’re fine. Simply collect the key and head for the exit door. However, if the key has fallen into one of the two beds of sharpangles, which is far more likely, it’s almost certainly game-over for you. It is virtually impossible to pick up the key and get it out of the bed of sharpangles without losing a Mario. You’re better off letting the key teleport back to the top of the screen, climbing the trapeze ladder, and starting your descent all over again.

All stages in the game require a little bit of luck to complete. But today’s stage requires more luck—about twice as much—than you normally need. One other bit of advice: depending on where you get separated from the key during your skillful fall determines where it lands in the canyon below. Try to make sure you lose it, or let go of it, above the land sections, if at all possible. Also: there’s a strong wind blowing from left to right. I didn’t really notice it during my fall, but I did notice it at the bottom of the canyon, especially if I fell from too great a height and injured myself (I’d get blown off the platform in my injured state, directly into a sharpangle bed).

Keep at it, keep grabbing the 1-Up heart at the top of the screen, and eventually today’s stage will bend to your will.