Staff members began to disappear at the end of August. One by one, they’d hang up their short pants and suspenders—or, if they were ladies, they’d hang up their pastel-colored, hoop-skirted dresses—say their goodbyes, then punch out for the last time and make their mass exodus back to school. I’d routinely departed with the end-of-August college crowd every year. But not that year. That year, with no place else to go, I was one of the handful of people who stayed behind and finished out the season at the restaurant.

Because of the severity of the winters, all the lakeshore businesses were seasonal, always opening a few weeks before Memorial Day, and always closing a few weeks after Labor Day. By mid-September, the restaurant was practically being operated by a skeleton crew. Sometimes customers came in, made sour faces at the menu, then drove off again, as if this place wasn’t what they were in the mood for at all. Most nights, the restaurant and bar sat empty. The building wasn’t insulated properly, so after the first frost of the year, I began wearing a Mr. Rogers cardigan during my shifts.

The days got shorter and the nights got longer. The leaves fell off the trees and clogged up the nearby canal.

One weeknight, the wind came off the lake with such force that it made the building’s frame shudder around us. The lights above the bar flickered a few times. An old drunk looked up from his draft, listened to the roar of the wind for a couple of seconds, and said, “Looks like winter’s here.”

There was a small cast-iron wood stove at the far end of the bar that I’d always assumed was a bit of theater, not unlike the spin-the-handle-a-few-times old-time cash register that sat behind the bar. But that night, to my surprise, the owner of the restaurant carried in an armful of logs and started a fire in the damn thing.

I began spending less time behind the bar and more time in front of the wood stove, tending to that fire as if my life depended on it. I pulled up a chair and poked at the flames, trying to figure out what to do with my life. I thought of Kristin, who’d been the season-finisher behind the bar at the restaurant over the last couple of years. She’d moved to the Pacific Northwest on a whim that summer and enrolled in an academic program there. She wrote me long, handwritten letters, which made me horny and made me laugh. I always kept her latest letter in my pocket and re-read read it next to the wood stove. Letters from girls, I thought, should always be read next to a roaring fire. I wondered, quite seriously, if I should join Kristin, pick up and follow her to the West Coast, see what life was like there. I wondered if it was a mistake to let her go away like that.

So I sat by the fire and mulled things over, waiting for the universe to give me a sign of some kind.

One night while warming myself near the wood stove and scanning the want ads in the local paper, I came across an advertisement that read: “ARE YOU FUN? EXCITING? DRAMATIC?” Yes, I thought to myself, I am definitely all of those things. “THEN CAREER OPPORTUNITIES AWAIT! COME JOIN SANTA’S TEAM!” There was a phone number at the bottom of the ad.

The next morning, I dialed it.

Let’s move on to stage 9-3. Today’s stage opens with Mario standing in the lower righthand corner of the screen at the mouth of a long, narrow passageway. There’s a conveyer belt running along the bottom of the passageway. Crouch, and let the conveyer belt carry you as safely past the upside-down sharpangles, a.k.a. stalactangles. When you’re on the far side of the conveyer belt, you’ll find a ladder that extends and retracts of its own volition, a.k.a. an extend-o  ladder, leading up to a tiny cell-like area that’s being patrolled by what appears to be a walking steer skull. Climb up the extend-o ladder to the solid part of the ladder, then wait for the barrier sealing this cell off from the cell to its immediate right to lift. Once that barrier lifts, the steer skull will vacate the first tiny cell. Finish your climb up the ladder, and brace yourself for a section of the game that I call the Hell Boxes.

The Hell Boxes are a trio of boxes that feature three barriers that open and close at Donkey Kong Junior’s bidding. There are two walking steer skull enemies patrolling the Hell Boxes. Worst-case scenario: you find yourself trapped inside one of the Hell Boxes with both steer skull enemies. If that happens, it’s almost certainly curtains for you.

Because of their strange shape, it’s extremely difficult to jump over the walking steer skulls. It can be done, yes. But it’s risky. My advice: as soon as you climb the ladder into the first of the three Hell Boxes, make like the wind and hustle through all three before D.K.J. gets around to lowering the barriers again. This is about minimizing your risk. The longer you stick around in the Hell Boxes, the more likely it is for something terrible to happen to you.

Once you’ve made it to the ladder at the far end of the Hell Boxes, you probably think you’ve seen the worst that today’s stage has to offer. You’d be wrong. The next section is by far the most challenging portion of today’s stage. Pro Tip Confession: It’s this part of the stage that really ate into my Mario reserves. What we’re looking at here is a medium-size conveyer belt that has a walking steer skull enemy traveling counter-clockwise around it. There’s an extend-o ladder leading up to the conveyer belt, and another extend-o ladder connecting the conveyer belt to the top tier of the stage. Also: the occasional Mario-shrinking mushroom passes through the area from time to time, complicating matters further.

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just go ahead and blurt it out: you’ll have to do something pretty extraordinary to get through this area. Either your timing will have to be superb, or you’ll have to make a did-you-just-see-that caliber jump. No matter what it turns out to be, remember this: it’s your moment. Now, get out there and shine.

Once you’re on the top tier, run over to Pauline, try to kiss her, then watch helplessly as Donkey Kong hauls her away. As Agatha Christie once wrong, “And then there were six…”