March 30, 2012 scottcjones 1Comment

[Welcome to day 90 of Man Vs. Donkey Kong. Why am I playing through all 101 stages of Donkey Kong (Game Boy, 1994) in 101 days? Go back to the beginning to find out. All caught up? Good. Proceed.] Though I fancied myself an artist and a storyteller (I’d written my first book in the third grade—a biting, mostly illustrated satire titled Planet of the Grapes), I actually did surprisingly well in math, too. Sure, I was marginally intimidated by instructions like, “To start using VICMON type SYS24576 or SYS6*4096, and then press the RETURN key.” But considering my comfort level with equations,…

March 29, 2012 scottcjones 3Comments

After some impromptu focus testing, I’d decided to shorten the name of my game from Plight of the Baby Sea Turtle to simply Turtle, because the words “plight of the baby sea turtle” were difficult for people to remember, and because they wouldn’t fit comfortably on a videogame box cover. Then I decided to add an exclamation point after the title, because Turtle! sounded like a more exciting game than Turtle. As I was blessed with an almost embarrassing amount of artistic talent (see: my unprecedented string of fire prevention-poster wins), I proceeded to make a mock-up of the Turtle! box…

March 28, 2012 scottcjones 3Comments

In the wake of my disastrous shopping spree and with Christmas only two weeks away, I turned to the one person in the universe who I still believed could right practically any wrong (and the only person, besides mustachioed TV magician Doug Henning, who could make genuine magic happen): Santa Claus. I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote Santa a detailed, irony-free missive that was no less than seven single-spaced pages in length, describing what had befallen me at the department store on the previous Saturday morning. Though I harbored some doubts about Santa’s existence, as any discerning…

March 27, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

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…

March 26, 2012 scottcjones 1Comment

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…

March 25, 2012 scottcjones 4Comments

The morning of the shopping spree, I woke up early and put on the shopping spree outfit that my brother had picked out for me: sweatpants, gym shoes, and a zip-up hoodie with two large pockets in the front. Dressing for comfort and speed, he explained, was the only way to go. “Plus, you can fill up those pockets with action figures,” he said, which, I had to agree, was an excellent point. When I went downstairs for breakfast, my mother took one look at me and said, “Where do you think we’re going today? Berry picking? We’re going into…

March 23, 2012 scottcjones

If I was going to make the most of my one-minute shopping spree, I had to get the lay of the land of the Zayre department store. So, on Saturday night, after dinner, my father drove us into Rome so I could perform some reconnaissance on the store’s floor plan. I brought my sketch pad and roamed the aisles, drawing rough diagrams of the store’s various departments. I planned on getting things for my mother (a wok) and my father (a metric system socket set), so I needed at least a cursory understanding of the layouts of Housewares and Hardware….

March 22, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

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…

March 21, 2012 scottcjones 1Comment

The contest form stated in bold lettering that all winners—first, second, and third place—would be notified no later than November 31st. Each morning I’d wake up, report to the calendar in our kitchen, and tick off another day, like a prisoner in solitary confinement in a movie. As the ticked-off days passed by, as the 31st loomed on the horizon, I grew more and more anxious. I’d always been a talented worrier, even when I had nothing to worry about. But whenever I did have something to actually worry about, like the outcome of this contest, I physically transformed into…

March 20, 2012 scottcjones

I sat at the kitchen table late into the night and worked on my entry form for the holiday coloring contest, burning the midnight oil, so to speak. The contest form consisted of a crude xeroxed illustration titled “A Special Moment.” It showed a family on Christmas morning—mom, dad, son, and daughter—all standing in front of a towering Christmas tree with a monstrous pile of presents underneath it. Off in the corner, through one of the windows, was Santa’s smiling face, peering in at the work he had done. (more…)