My parents and I were quite skilled when it came to ignoring TV commercials. But that night, as we watched television together in the living room, a commercial advertising the Penn-Can Mall caught our attention. “Hey kids!” the excited announcer said. “Santa Claus is coming to the Penn-Can Mall this Saturday morning at 10 a.m.!”

Suddenly, it dawned on me that what this commercial was referring to me.

The announcer continued, “Though he’ll have to leave his pal Rudolph and his sleigh parked on the mall’s rooftop, he’ll be riding an old fashioned fire engine straight into Santa’s Village at the heart of the mall!” Santa’s Village? I thought. Apparently, I have an entire village to preside over. “Be at Center Court at 10 a.m. sharp to meet and greet Santa!” The commercial described various mall-wide sales and bargains, and then was punctuated with the mall’s trademark four-second theme song which consisted of a choir singing, “It’s happenin’ now at Penn-Can Mall!”

My parents, to put it mildly, were skeptical of my first career move after college. “An old fashioned fire truck?” my mother said, trying to be supportive. “That certainly sounds exciting.”

My father didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “Four years of college and this is what you decide to do with yourself?” he said.

“He’s always been a free spirit, Bob,” my mother said.

“Free spirit my ass,” my father said. “He’s going to sit around at the mall all day dressed as Santa Claus. It’s obvious that he doesn’t have a plan. Without hard work and a plan, you’ve got nothing in life.”

That’s when I decided to tell them both about my still-in-the-planning-stages plan: I would save enough money to move to Chicago in January. While I’d never been to Chicago in my life, it sounded like a pretty good city to start my life in. I also had a few college friends there who I could stay with until I got on my feet. What ensued was my father’s attempt to put holes in my still-in-the-planning plan:

How was I planning on getting to Chicago? (In the Subaru.) Did I have any idea how far away Chicago was? (I did. I had purchased several maps showing me exactly how far away it was. It was, make no mistake, very far.) What made me think that the Subaru would even make it to Chicago? (I had faith that it would make it.) Faith? Cars don’t run on faith. And what if it doesn’t make it? What if it breaks down along the way? Which is likely to happen. (Then I’ll get it fixed.) Mocking laughter. Do you know how much a tow-truck will run you? (Or, my other option is to sit here in the middle of the woods for the rest of my life with you, living within the same dull 25-mile radius, the way that you do.) You think you know what you’re doing. Well, you don’t. Even if you do make it to Chicago, and that’s a big if, what are you planning on doing there for a job? (I’ll figure it out when I get there.) More mocking laughter.

I didn’t know it then, but I would get to Chicago, not in January as planned, but in February. I didn’t know that the car, as my father had predicted, would break down along the way. I didn’t know that I would leave home forever on a Wednesday morning, or that I would say goodbye to my mother on the front porch of our house. I didn’t know that snow would be falling around us, or that she would kiss me and hug me, and then, choking up, she would say, “You’d better go now before I try and stop you.”

I didn’t know any of that.

At that moment in time, all I knew was that if I ever wanted anything interesting to happen to me—yes, “interesting” was the best word I could come up with at that particular moment—then I had to get out of that house as quickly as possible. Otherwise, Stockholm Syndrome would set in, and one morning a decade on, I’d find myself managing a Bennigan’s Restaurant in Syracuse, giving pep talks to my staff which always ended with the sentence, “Without hard work and a plan, you’ve got nothing in life.”

There was a new kind of gravity about the place—around the house itself, around my mother and father—that I’d recently become aware of. There was a comforting dullness that I was getting more and more used to all the time. I knew that I needed to do something drastic, something bold like move to Chicago, or else the gravity would take hold and never let go.

A few days before I left for Chicago, my father would do something that would surprise me: he’d change the oil in the car and give it a tune-up. And when it broke down, he would be the one I’d call from a pay-phone in Ohio. “I don’t know what to do, dad,” I’d say to him over the phone, my voice quavering, disappointed in myself for letting him see how vulnerable I actually was. I’d expected him to say, “That’s it. This folly is over. Come back home where you belong.” But he didn’t. What he did was this: he sighed, then said, “You have no choice now. Get the car fixed and keep going. You have to keep going.”

You have to keep going. I’ve never forgotten the moment he said those words to me.

On the Saturday morning of The Arrival, my father fixed a batch of blueberry pancakes for breakfast for me, which was his quiet way of wishing me well. Despite all of his undermining over the course of my lifetime, I’ve always suspected deep down that maybe, just maybe, the man has been quietly rooting for me all along.

Let’s take a crack at stage 9-7, shall we? The ingredients for today’s stage are as follows: one part despair, two parts misery, bake in an oven for one hour, then top with sprinkles of agony. Remember those vanishing blocks, a.k.a. vanishers/disappearers? Imagine a stage that consisted entirely of vanishers, where everything that you step on or even touch begins to instantly disintegrate beneath your feet. Sounds like hell, right? Well, that’s what we’re dealing with in today’s stage.

A great many Marios went to their deaths morning; good Marios, Marios who deserved better than the series of clumsy falls and poorly timed jumps that I was responsible for. And, I admit, there were several moments this morning when I wondered if, after coming all this way—99 stages in all—if I’d even be able to do this stage. No kidding. As I watched my Mario reserves dwindle, a voice in my head whispered, Hey Donkey Kong expert, maybe this is the stage that finally breaks you. It sure looks like it might be. Man, I have never seen someone go through more Marios in a shorter amount of time than you are. There goes another one. And another. And—whoops!—another.

I eventually managed to ignore that dumb voice long enough to get this thing done. Here’s how I did it.

From your initial starting point in the lower lefthand corner of the stage, head to the right, leaving a trail of disappearing blocks in your wake. I know it’s unnerving to realize that the ground is vanishing behind you. Try not to think about it too much. Now, as you’re moving, you can perform an on-the-fly, opposite-direction backflip simply by hitting the jump button while Mario is moving at full-speed. Opposite-direction backflips, or ODBF’s, give Mario approximately twice the height of regular jumps.

Your first ODBF will take you up to tier two. Move to the right, once again leaving disappearing blocks behind you. Then do an ODBF up to tier three.

Now, let’s pause here for a moment before we go any further. The two ODBF jumps that you need to perform to reach tier two and subsequently tier three can be performed—and this is the real key to getting this stage done—much earlier than you think. In other words, instead of waiting until you’re all the way to the right on the first tier, try pulling off the ODBF when you’re about three-quarters of the way to the right. This will get you up to tier two in record time. Pull off another early ODBF on tier two, you’ll be all the way up on tier three before you know it.

At this point, you’ll inevitably come face to face with the Eerie Mushrooms which Donkey Kong has been hurling from his stage-top vantage point. But, thanks to your your ODBF’s, you’ll confront them at a much later point in your journey to the top. As always in Donkey Kong, anytime we can minimize the amount of time we spend in the company of enemies or obstructions automatically 1. increases the odds of us not getting killed and 2. increases the odds of us reaching our goal.

I’m sorry to have to do this to you, but you’re on your own the rest of the way. No two people will ever navigate the next three or four Eerie Mushrooms the same exact way. If one touches you, it’s almost always a death-sentence. Mario shrinks, the blocks vanish, a fall is usually inevitable, etc. Avoid the Eerie Mushrooms, use your ODBF’s wisely, and before you know it, you’ll be downwind of Pauline’s perfume again as D.K. carries her away.

Hey, I did it. So can you.

We’ve got a mere two more stages to go before we can shut this thing down. At this point, I have a paltry seven Marios remaining in my Mario Reserves. Seven Marios, I’d imagine, isn’t enough Marios to get the job done. We’ll find out tomorrow, when me and my seven Marios confront stage 100. Stay tuned.