Once it was all over, Mr. Kaufman winced as he inspected the contents of my shopping cart, as if each crappy, worthless item he saw in there sent a jolt of painful electricity through his system. “Will you look at this amazing haul?” he said. Then he kept making jokes that the Zayre department store would probably have to close early that day due to the substantial dent I’d put in the store’s supplies.

A photographer from the local newspaper appeared. He positioned Mr. Kaufman and me in front of my cart, then he badgered me into smiling. Once the photographer had what he needed, I made a beeline for the store’s restrooms where I released another torrent of diarrhea while trying to figure out how an event that was supposed to be so wonderful had turned out to be so awful.

“They screwed you,” my father said in the car on the way home. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: even when you win in life, you lose.” My father believed this notion with all his being. Whenever we watched a gameshow together, he was forever pointing out the ways in which contestants were being cheated out of their rightful winnings. One gameshow dressed contestants in drab jumpsuits, then put them inside a glass booth and turned on an air blower which sent a flock of hundred-dollar bills figure-eight-ing around the contestants. The challenge was to grab as many of the flying hundred-dollar bills as possible in 30 seconds. The rule was, the only bills contestants were allowed to keep were the ones they were able to stuff inside the jumpsuit’s pockets. “What they do is they make the pockets on those jumpsuits extra small, so adult hands can’t fit inside them,” he said. “So the people have to fold or wad up the bills in order to get them into the pockets, and that folding and wadding takes extra time, and that extra time means they’re grabbing fewer bills. See how the world works?”

My mother would typically provide the positive counterpoint to my father’s paranoid theories. But that day in the car, in the wake of what had just happened, she agreed with him. “They did screw you,” she said bitterly. “How can you do something like that to a kid? They should be ashamed.”

As the four of us combed over the whole event again—the locking up of the Electronics Department; the last-minute layout change of the store; the way that the more expensive items were mysteriously missing from store shelves—I started to focus less on the tangible results (the crummy toys, the two hammers, and even the blender would all go into a box and eventually would be sold at a garage sale the following summer), and more on the fact that, for once, my family had a common cause.

For one brief, rare moment, the four of us were united—we finally all agreed on something—and it felt good to do so.

And now, let’s have a go at stage 8-11. I had a technical hiccup with WordPress this morning. And by “technical hiccup,” I mean that WordPress inadvertently deleted my write-up of stage 8-11. Sad face. So what you are reading right now is a recreation of a write-up that I had already written up. Which I am obviously not happy about having to do. No matter, the show must go on, etc. etc.

If you want to get out of this stage alive, you’ll need to use the three portable ladder power-ups wisely. Note that the key is on the righthand side of the upper tier and the exit door is on the lefthand side. Between the two stands a barrier, at the very bottom of which is a small passageway. There’s a conveyer belt underneath the passageway. My idea is this: I need to put the key on the conveyer belt on the left, then allow it to be carried through the small passageway to the right. Then I need to hustle over to the left side and re-collect the key before it vanishes.

In order to do this, I’ll need those aforementioned portable ladders. The first ladder you’ll want to deploy is the one all the way to the left, in the elevator shaft area. You’ll want to trigger this one first because, of the three, it’s the one that’s the most out of the way. Position it directly underneath the area where the key is located, then quickly climb up it.

Once you’re next to the key, trigger the second portable ladder power-up and position it on the lefthand side of the barrier, in the upper tier, connecting it with the raised platform where the exit door is located. Next: pick up the key, toss it onto the conveyer belt, then scurry back down the original ladder as quickly as possible.

Back down on the lower tier, hurry to the third and final portable ladder power-up and trigger it. Use it to connect the lower tier with the upper tier, then hustle up it and reclaim the key. (If you’re not quick enough, and the key blinks and vanishes, you’ll need to start the whole three-ladder process all over again.) No matter how quick on your feet you are, it’s always going to be a photofinish, so make sure you don’t waste any time along the way.

Once you have the key, jump up, tossing the key upward at the apex of your jump so that it lands on the raised platform where the exit door is located. Quickly climb up the ladder to the exit-door platform, reclaim the key, and you’re done for the day. Next up: day 88, people. Gird your loins.