I was instructed to meet a Mr. Carbone in the diner up on the second floor of the mall at 9 a.m. sharp on Saturday morning, one hour before The Arrival. “Mr. Carbone is your Santa Squad leader,” Gerta had said over the phone. “He’s the one who will go over the weekly shift schedule with you and describe the overall flow of activity in Santa’s Village.”

On my drive to the mall, I realized that my father’s good-luck pancakes weren’t cooperating with my nervous stomach. I had no choice but to make an emergency stop at a Citgo bathroom, barreling into the parking lot like I was there to rob the place.

When I finally arrived at the mall diner, I scanned the restaurant for Mr. Carbone and the rest of my Santa Squad. The thick smell of bacon grease and coffee made my stomach start to twitch again. “See? I knew you were Santa material,” a familiar voice said. Terry, a.k.a. “Tinsel The Elf,” peered up at me from a nearby booth. Sitting next to him was Mrs. Tinsel, a.k.a. Carla, who once again had a bit of knitting in her lap.

“What are you two doing here?” I asked, hoping that running into them was little more than an unfortunate coincidence.

“Well, Carla and I are big fans of watered-down coffee and burnt toast, aren’t we, darling?” Terry said, elbowing Carla while making “mmm” sounds. Carla ignored him and continued to knit. “What do you think we’re doing here? Like you, we’re employees of Blossom Hills. We,” he said, pausing to let this piece of news sink in, “are your Santa Squad.”

“But where is Mr. Carbone?” I asked, my voice cracking like a teenager’s. Mr. Carbone, I figured, could sort out all of this for me.

Terry looked at me like I was a lost cause. “Santas are never the brightest bulbs in the box, are they, Carla?” he said. “I’m Mr. Carbone. And you’re late, on your first day, which I should write you up for, but I won’t. Now sit down and let’s get started. Thanks to your tardiness, we’ve got less than an hour to pull this Arrival together.”

As Primary Santa, Terry explained, I’d be working all the Primary shifts, which were from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, with a half hour scheduled for lunch each day. I asked Terry when my day off would be. He pretended to shuffle through the paperwork in front of him, then said, “Good news! All of your days off are scheduled to begin on December 26 and continue until the end of time.” This was seasonal employment, he explained. “That means everyone works every day, all day, until the season is over.”

The way Santa’s Village worked was this: parents and kids would form a line behind a maze of ropes that lead to Santa’s House. Terry would keep the line moving, planting a new child in my lap every 30 seconds to a minute. Terry would also be responsible for trying to convince waiting parents that the Holiday Moment that was only seconds away from happening could be captured for eternity in a “memory.” That’s when he’d explain the individual “Memories Packages” to parents. For $9.95, parents could purchase a package that featured a 5 x 7 memory and 12 wallet-size memories. But for $24.95, parents would receive an 8 x 10 memory (suitable for framing), four 5 x 7 memories, and 24 wallet-size memories. “I’ll handle the parents,” Terry said. “I know just what to say to them to get them to open up their fat wallets.” Carla, he explained, would operate the camera/memory maker

Terry then proceeded to lay out a few Santa rules for me. “Rule one: Santa must be escorted by a Santa Squad member at all times, without exception,” he explained. “You are never, under any circumstances, allowed to be out of your house and roaming the mall on your own.” A roaming Santa, Terry said, was a “soft target.” “Outside the Village, kids won’t be able to leave you alone. Even worse, teenagers will taunt you. You wouldn’t believe what a group of teenagers did to an unescorted Santa in a Hoboken shopping center last year. They took that poor guy apart. I don’t care if it’s only for a 30-second bathroom break. Carla or I will walk with you to and from the Village,” he said.

Throughout all of this, I wondered where the Secondary Santa was. Why didn’t he have to attend this all-important Santa Squad meeting? “You mean ‘Dave’? Oh, he’s another bright bulb,” Terry said. Terry and Carla had met with Dave earlier in the week. And since Dave was only the Secondary, he didn’t require the same degree of training that I required.

Terry tapped the face of his watch. “We’ve got 15 minutes to get you into the suit,” he said. “Meeting adjourned.” As Terry and Carla collected the loose papers scattered across the booth’s table, I asked where exactly we’d be meeting the antique fire truck. “Gerta didn’t tell you?” Terry said. “The fire truck is cancelled.” Not only had the fire truck itself suffered multiple mechanical failures on the way to the mall, the whole notion of driving a vehicle through the mall, even at a speed slightly slower than a crawl, was deemed too dangerous by mall management. “Kids lose their shit when they see Santa,” Terry said, “and the mall was concerned that a kid in a ‘holy crap I see Santa’ state of excitement might hurl himself under the wheels. It wasn’t worth the risk.”

I asked Terry to tell me that he was kidding.

“For the last time, there is no fire truck,” he said.

The new plan, Terry explained, was that I’d be escorted by four decorated members of the Syracuse Police Department. “The five of you will take the elevator up to the second floor, right over there,” he said, pointing out the front of the diner and across the expanse of the courtyard towards an elevator door. “The doors will open, and together all five of you will ride the escalator down into Center Court, straight into the Village. It won’t have the punch of the fire truck, but it’ll get the job done.”

Before I had a chance to feel sorry for myself over the underwhelming way that I’d be arriving at the mall, Terry and Carla were hustling me through one of the mall’s invisible side doors just outside the diner. Behind the door was a narrow, concrete block-lined corridor, which opened up onto more corridors. I was completely lost in this labyrinth of steel doors and concrete, but Terry and Carla seemed to know where they were going.

The two of them led me to a large, dusty storage room that was filled with every seasonal decoration the mall used throughout the year. There were large plywood cutouts of chipper-looking turkeys that were typically propped around the roof of the mall every Thanksgiving. There was the foam rubber Jack-O-Lantern that was approximately the size of a compact car that stood outside of the Sears every October. And there were the life-size bipedal rabbit family—mom and dad and their brood—all with cloudy marbles for eyes and bald patches where their pastel-colored fur had been eaten away by mice. In the middle of all this stood a clothing rack. On the rack hung a pair of Santa suits.

The suit and I, to put it mildly, did not get along. The pants rode up so high on me that it looked as if I was wearing a pair of red-velvet clam diggers. And the oversized jacket, even with the waist pillow, hung on me like a sail in need of a decent wind. The four decorated members of the Syracuse Police Department, thumbs hooked into their gun belts, began making fun of me as soon as they arrived. “Hey, boys! Santa looks like an old scarecrow that’s been left out in the rain,” one of the cops observed as the other three guffawed.

That’s when Carla stepped in. She grabbed a grease pencil and whitened my eyebrows. She positioned the beard on my face, then found a brush in her knitting bag and combed out the tangles. “One minute and counting,” Terry said, looking at his watch and shifting from foot to foot. Carla reached into her knitting bag one final time. To my surprise she pulled out several fat skeins of wool, then stuffed them underneath my jacket. Then she said two of the approximately 10 words that she’d ever say to me over the next four weeks of our time together. She said: “That’s better.”

And it was better. Even the guffawing cops agreed.

The four cops and I rode the mall elevator up to the second floor together. “Come on, Santa, let’s hear your ho, ho, ho,” one of them teased. I opened my mouth, and as Gerta had predicted, the ho-ho-ho was there, at the moment I needed it.

“Not bad, Santa,” one of the cops said.

We rode in silence after that. A decade later, years after my four-week stint as Santa Claus, long after the Penn-Can Mall closed its doors for the last time in 1996, I would come across a quote that had some unexplained, vague significance to me: “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has discovered yet.” It was something that Oscar Wilde, a man who knew something about artifice, had written.

For years the quote knocked around in my head like a gum-ball caught in a vacuum cleaner. Then one day, it dawned on me that the quote was significant because it accurately described the way that I’d found my way, or lurched my way, or lucked my way into a Santa suit, and all the various suits, literally and figuratively, that I’ve subsequently somehow found myself wearing ever since.

This is what the mall's old Center Court looks like in its current incarnation, "Driver's Village."

I can still remember the moment that those elevator doors opened. I knew the crowd for The Arrival would be big, but nothing could have prepared me for what I found out there. Center Court was at capacity. The crowd sprawled in every direction, spilling over into the mall’s various wings.

“Jesus, you’d think the damn Bee Gees were here,” one of the cops said.

Another cop nudged me off the elevator, towards the escalator. “It’s showtime, Santa,” he said. “Let’s move.” The five of us began our slow, escalator-driven descent into Santa’s Village.

One of the cops poked me in the back. “You should probably give them a wave, Santa,” he said.

I lifted one of my green mitten-covered hands and waved. A bona fide roar went up. ”See? They’re eating it up,” the the cop said.

“You should probably give them one of your ho-ho-ho’s, Santa,” another cop said.

He was right. I definitely should do that. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs. Then I unleashed an otherworldly ho-ho-ho that boomed across Center Court. It traveled the length of the Sears wing, then eventually echoed its way back.

The third cop leaned close to my ear. His breath reeked of garlic and eggs. “That’s it, Santa,” he said. “Now you’re giving these crazy assholes their money’s worth.”

After 101 days, it seems that we’ve finally arrived at our destination, people. Welcome to stage 9-9 which, unless Nintendo pulls a fast one on us, should be the very last stage in the game. Also, be sure to check the area around you for any personal belongings before exiting the aircraft. And thank you, in advance, for flying with us.

Yesterday we bore witness as Donkey Kong plunged hundreds, maybe even thousands of feet to what appeared to be his certain death. No ordinary ape could have survived a fall like that. Yet, if we’ve learned anything about D.K. over the last 100 levels, it’s that he’s no ordinary ape. Other things we’ve learned about D.K.: he’s selfish, he’s stupid, and he thinks that throwing weird mushrooms at people is funny.

Donkey Kong, of course, is very much alive and well in today’s stage. From what I can see—and I can only see his face and his hands (more on this in a moment)—he doesn’t appear to have a scratch on him. And I have one more bit of news that you’re probably not going to like: he has somehow become gigantic. So, who exactly took a nose-dive from the top of the tower yesterday? Was it, a la a telenovela plot twist, D.K.’s twin brother, Tom Kong? Note to Hollywood: I would very much enjoy seeing a movie called Tom Kong, the sad, poignant tale of King Kong’s younger brother, Tom, who works as a busboy at a Taco Bell by day but dreams of one day eclipsing his more famous brother’s glory by becoming the toast of Broadway. Go ahead and get to work on that, Hollywood. I’ll be waiting over here, arms folded across my chest and whistling.

Exactly how big is this final incarnation of Donkey Kong? He’s so big that the Game Boy’s original screen apparently was unable to contain his entire body. So what we see are his head and his hands. That’s all. On the bright side, Giant D.K. is so massive that Mario can actually ride around on his nose.

How To Ride On Giant D.K.’s Nose:

1. Stand in front of his face. 2. Jump. Voila, now you’re riding on his nose, which turns out to be even more fun than riding on that rogue ladybug. (See: JUNGLE.)

From the opening moments of this stage, it’s obvious that Giant Donkey Kong is determined to murder Mario once and for all. How do you know that he wants to murder Mario? Like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, no matter where Mario goes in the stage—left side, right side, up, down—D.K.’s bloodshot, rage-filled eyes eerily follow him. Also, at the outset, know this: this qualifies as the longest, most protracted battle in the entire game. Which is appropriate, considering that after this, there is no more game to play. (…Or is there?)

I won’t sugarcoat it: you’ll need plenty of nerve and stamina to survive this encounter. You have to strike D.K.  no less than six times with barrels (more on how to do this in a moment), while surviving his increasingly unpredictable attacks. And, if you’ve been with me on this mad quest since the beginning, no doubt you can predict what I’m going to say next, which is this: in order to survive this final, epic skirmish, you’ll need ample amounts of both luck and skill. One last word of advice before you begin: make sure that your Mario Reserves are topped off before heading into the breach. I personally wouldn’t attempt this stage with anything less than 30 Marios in the tank. The absolute last thing you want to have to worry about today is running out of Marios at a crucial moment. If you need to, go do some Mario Harvesting (which, in retrospect, I’m going to miss; I loved revisiting the old levels and squeezing Marios out of them), then come back here when you’re ready.

All set? Let’s go.

Round 1: D.K.’s gigantic head appears from the bottom of the screen, blooming like one of those stop-motion movies of a flower. On either side of his head are his gigantic hands, balled into tight fists (a sure sign that D.K. is sexually frustrated). The fists slam to the ground twice, in rapid succession—first one, then the other. If Mario is standing on the ground, the resulting “fist quake” (decent name for a band, by the way) will temporarily paralyze him. So try to jump when the fists are about to come down. It’s not easy to avoid both the first and the second fist-quakes from his one-two fist slams. But know that it can be done.

The fist quakes, per usual, trigger an avalanche of trash from the top of the screen, which includes the usual assortment of hubcaps, dumbbells and barrels. All three of these things can kill Mario. The barrels behave identically to the barrels in Stage 100, meaning that they never magically stop falling and right themselves. Instead, they keep on falling, straight through the bottom of the screen.

You could try to handstand-catch one of the falling barrels. This does work. I know, because I executed a couple of handstand-catches. However, once the barrel is upright, getting out of the handstand, then getting on top of the barrel, then picking up the barrel, and then tossing it at Donkey Kong’s dopey face simply takes too much time. I lost a couple of Marios while experimenting with this strategy, before I finally abandoned it.

Notice that every 10 seconds or so a rogue barrel will plummet from the top of the screen with the “trashvalanche” and land upright of its own volition on the platform directly above Donkey Kong’s head. In order to reach the platform and that upright barrel, you’ll need to, 1. stand on D.K.’s nose, 2. wait for the one-two fists to fall on either side of his head, 3. climb on top of one of the fallen fists (they don’t stay fallen for long, so you’ll need to be quick about it), then, 4. use the fist as a kind of elevator to reach the platforms above D.K.’s head.

Pulling this off requires patience and persistence. Sometimes you’ll fall off the fist for no discernible reason; other times, you’ll actually make it to the upper platforms, but the upright barrel will be gone by the time you arrive (a one-two fist pound will cause it to explode into splinters). Then you’ll have to loiter up there in what I refer to as “The Danger Zone,” waiting for the next magic barrel to arrive. Pro Tip: Jump back and forth between the platforms, trying to time your jumps so that you’re airborne when the fists—one, two—hit the ground.

Once you do finally have a barrel in hand—don’t get discouraged; you’ll get one eventually, trust me—hustle over to one of the lower platforms on either the left or right. Position yourself as far out on the edge of the platform as possible. Then turn around and heave the barrel at D.K. If you’re far out enough on the platform, the barrel will strike him square in the face. He’ll cringe for a couple of seconds, then gather himself, then continue attacking you. Do this a second time. Congratulations, you’ve survived Round 1. On to Round 2.

Round 2: D.K. introduces a new handclap move in this round. Instead of the one-two fist pound, his hands appear at the left and right side of the screen, like bookends. They then slowly move together, meeting directly in front of his face, making a thunderous, Mario-crushing clap. The hands retract, then repeat.

These claps, as you might expect, cause “clap quakes” which will shake more trash and barrels loose from the sky. What you need to do is this: position yourself on D.K.’s nose, then jump whenever the hands are about to come together. Avoid the trashvalanche, stay alive, and every second or third clap, the hands—and this is important—will very briefly rise up, like hand-shaped elevators. Pro Tip: They change color when they do this, become a darker shade of beige (good old Game Boy). These hand elevators raise Mario high enough so that he can reach the above platforms, a.k.a. Home of the Magic Upright Barrel.

Once you’re above it all, D.K. will revert back to his old one-two fist pound, in the name of bringing you back down to the ground. Again, try to survive on the platforms until a barrel falls from the sky onto the center platform. When you get knocked down—yes, that’s “when,” not “if”—D.K. will revert back to the handclap move again. Be patient here, ride those hand elevators whenever they’re available, and keep striving for those magic upright barrels.

Hurl two of the barrels into his face, and like that you’re off to Round 3.

Round 3: This round is identical to the two previous rounds, with one monumental exception: D.K. vanishes from the screen at random intervals, leaving only one of his giant hands visible. The disembodied hand will move across the screen, either left to right or right to left, pounding the ground three times—boom, boom, boom. You can avoid the hand, as well as the sky trash that falls from the sky, by quickly moving all the way either to the left or righthand side of the screen.

Once D.K.’s fat head finally returns, you’ll know what to do from here on out: ride the nose, avoid the handclap, take the hand elevator, reach the upper platforms, stall for time until the Magic Upright Barrel appears, grab the barrel, race to the edge, and pelt D.K. with it. Do this twice, and that’s it—you have officially completed all 101 stages of the 1994 Game Boy version of Donkey Kong. Take a moment to go and find someone or something to hug. If there are no actual human beings in the vicinity, a cat or dog will do. Once it’s all over, a brief animation is triggered, showing Pauline and Mario standing together. It occurs to me in this moment that Mario and Pauline bear a striking resemblance to Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley.

Things veer unexpectedly towards the weird when Pauline/Christie whips out an Eerie Mushroom and offers it to Mario/Billy. Mario accepts the Eerie Mushroom, which transforms him back to Regular-Size Mario. Which, I realize in retrospect, means that Giant Donkey Kong was not a giant at all, but that Mario was simply Hamster-Size Mario all along.

An 8-bit heart appears between Pauline and Mario. Then, without warning, Donkey Kong’s corpse falls from the top of the screen, accompanied by a slide-whistle sound effect. His lifeless corpse appears to outright flatten Mario. Then Mario climbs to his feet, holding Donkey Kong’s body above his head, and strikes a victory pose.

It's over. Sad face.

Donkey Kong ends the way that all Nintendo games end: with everyone putting their differences aside and becoming great friends again. The last image in the entire game consists of a Polaroid-like snapshot of Mario, Pauline, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior all posing in front of a picturesque mountain range, as if they are all enjoying a family vacation together in the Rockies.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but Donkey Kong looks a little sheepish in the photo, as if to say, “Sorry for all this craziness, guys. Bananas on me tonight, OK?” Mario is making a “V” sign with his gloved right hand. Pauline is looking offscreen, to the right, which tells me that she’s not 100-percent committed to Mario. (You get the feeling that she’s just waiting for someone else to come along and carry her away for another 101 stages.) And Donkey Kong Junior? He looks as if he’s recently enjoyed a bout of high-speed self-pleasure.

Now that it’s over—and it really is over; there are no more stages beyond stage 9-9—I feel the way I usually feel at the end of a videogame: a little hollow, a little disappointed, a little sad. While games have evolved over the last 50 years, they still don’t do the whole denouement thing terribly well. The end of Donkey Kong, for some reason, reminded me of a scene from Spielberg’s A.I. It’s the moment when the robot boy, David, decides to sit down with his human parents for dinner, even though, being a robot, he can’t eat food. He loads up his plate, really piling it on, not only in the name of attempting to develop a closer bond with his human parents, but also because he is trying to be what he believes his parents want him to be. Game endings, I think, tend to have that same eager-to-please, going-through-the-motions quality as David’s act. “If only we act like there’s real feeling here,” the endings always seem to say, “maybe real feeling will eventually show up.”

Gamers are always claiming to have “finished” this game or that game. But “finished” doesn’t feel like the right word to me. Games aren’t finished, not in the traditional way that books and movies are finished. At this moment, Donkey Kong isn’t over for me; I could ostensibly go on replaying the previous stages of the game until the end of time. Instead of describing games as “finished,” maybe a more accurate word might be “abandoned.”

Because that’s what it feels like to me: like it’s time for me to abandon Donkey Kong. That’s what we do to games: we leave them behind because they have given us what we needed and now it’s time to move on and start something new. Sure, in the future, I’ll inevitably find myself wistfully staring at the Donkey Kong icon in the 3DS’s menu. And, on a random cross-country flight some day, I’ll probably even boot up the game again, for old time’s sake, to see if the magic is still there. But I’ve lived long enough, and finished enough videogames, to know that it will never be the same again.

It will never feel the way that it feels right now, at this moment. The same way that Bob Dylans’s “Blood on the Tracks” is forever tied to a series of terrible Greyhound bus trips I made to Boston in the late ’1990′s, Donkey Kong will forever be tied to this time and to this place in my life.

It’s finally starting to sink in now. It’s really over, isn’t it? My work here is finished. Tomorrow morning, for the first time since January 1st, I’ll wake up without a Donkey Kong stage in need of playing.

I can’t wait.

From the moment I’d been hired by Blossom Hills, I’d been expecting some kind of formal instruction on how to be a Santa Claus. I assumed that I’d have to attend regular Santa Classes—”I’m busy this weekend,” I’d say to friends, “I’ve got Santa School again”—or, at the very least, I’d have to read a very detailed pamphlet teaching me the right way to deliver a ho-ho-ho and how to handle any tricky requests from kids. Example: Instead of Hot Wheels or a Barbie Dream House, what if a child wanted his recently divorced mom and dad to mend fences and get back together? What then?

“Use your common sense,” Gerta said to me over the phone. “Always keep things vague and non-committal. If a child asks you for something personal and abstract like that, simply say, ‘Let old Santa see what he can do about it.’ ”

” ‘Let old Santa see what he can do about it,’ ” I repeated back to her.

“See? You’re a natural,” she said.

I told her that I’d still feel better if there was a class or maybe a detailed pamphlet or series of detailed pamphlets.

“Trust me, once you’re in the suit, you’ll know what to do. Everyone always does. It probably sounds crazy to you, but the suit has magical powers. You’ll see.”

I liked the way she kept referring to it as “The Suit,” like it was the only suit in the world worth wearing. I couldn’t wait to try it on.

“As for the ho-ho-ho, let me tell you a story. Every Blossom Hills regional manager, regardless of whether they’re a man or woman, has to spend one holiday season working as a Santa Claus. It’s part of our training. Me? I wore The Suit for four weeks straight in, seven days a week, in a mall just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I learned a lot about myself in those four weeks, including many things which are personal, and which are therefore none of your business. But one thing I learned that I will share with you is this—”

At that moment it sounded as if the phone line had gone dead. Just as I was about to hang up on my end, I endured a jolt of sound so overwhelming that it threatened to shatter the phone’s earpiece which had been pressed against my ear. The sound, of course, was Gerta’s, “HO, HO, HO, HO!” She drew out the final “O” for a couple of extra beats.

“Unbelievable,” I said. “You sounded like a 400-pound man with a chest cold.”

“I know!” Gerta said. “Isn’t that amazing?”

Time for stage 9-8. And lo, sound the clarions and release the doves, for the one hundredth stage of Donkey Kong is upon us.

Welcome to what is the very top of TOWER. Today’s stage looks and feels like many of the showdown-style stages we’ve seen before in the game. We’ve got Donkey Kong hurling barrels from his stone perch high above the stage floor. We’ve got Mario, looking meek as always, with barrels raining down upon him. But what sets this stage apart from anything we’ve dealt with so far in the game is the way the barrels behave. Typically in this sort of stage, the barrels would fall to the bottom of the stage, then magically right themselves. Mario would be free to grab one of the righted barrels, carry it up to a platform next to D.K., and pelt him with it.

But the barrels here? They never magically right themselves. They simply keep on rolling, obeying the laws of physics, until they roll clear off the screen.

So what you need to do here is this: you need to maneuver Mario into his handstand position. When a barrel approaches from above, Mario will catch it and stop its progress with his feet. (I’d seen this move before, but only during one of the interstitial animations. I had no idea that this move was actually possible.) Once caught and stopped, the barrel with stand upright, which is Mario’s cue to hoist it onto his shoulders, climb up a couple of platforms, and give Donkey Kong a taste of his own barrel-flavored medicine. Hit D.K. three times, and he’s finished.

Oh, and there’s one more complicating factor you should be aware of: if one barrel strikes another barrel, a pair of Eerie Mushrooms will emerge from the wreckage. Also: delivering a blow to D.K. will cause an Eerie Mushroom to mysteriously appear from (for lack of a better term) his area. I have to say, of all the enemies and hazards that I’ve encountered in the game, these Eerie Mushrooms are easily my least favorite. As always, they seem harmless enough, but touching one at the wrong moment, and shrinking Mario down to his hamster size, can, 1. make this already chaotic stage feel overwhelming, and 2. make me shout the words, “Come on!” There’s something unfair and sneaky about the Eerie Mushrooms that I despise.

Now, I’m not going to sugarcoat this: You’ve got a real fight on your hands in this stage. The key, as always, is to remain calm. A couple of pointers that helped me survive:

*The easiest barrels to catch are the ones that D.K. hurls straight down. Position yourself underneath him, ignore the barrels that he tosses off to the left and right, and wait for that fastball barrel right down the middle.

*Remember, though the path of the barrels is difficult to predict, D.K. usually tosses a barrel to the right, then to the left, then down the middle. But every now and then, a barrel will go rogue. Be ready to handstand-flip out of the way at any moment.

*Those Eerie Mushrooms can become a real nuisance. If you spot one or two of them heading your way, and if you think you can catch a barrel on your feet and get out of the way before they arrive, let me tell you something: You can’t. Don’t be afraid to back off, give up your handstand position, let a down-the-middle barrel go by, and wait for the conditions to be right. Be patient, take your time, and eventually you’ll give D.K. those three knocks.

Final numbers for the final stretch of TOWER:

Stage 9-5: 175 seconds

Stage 9-6: 140 seconds

Stage 9-7: 190 seconds

Stage 9-8: 131 seconds

Grand total: 636. Number of Marios in my Mario Reserves: 46. (Confession: I did some serious Mario Harvesting for about an hour prior to this stage, getting my Mario reserves up to 50 before having a go at it. Starting this stage with only seven Marios seemed like a recipe for disaster.)

The post-stage animation? It’s downright glorious. It shows a defeated D.K., upside down, arms flailing, as he plunges from the top of the tower to his—I hope—his certain death. I’ve booked a room for Pauline and me at the Hedonism Resort in Jamaica, so let’s head to the airport…

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.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, assuring me that it was, in fact, still very much open. 

I lobbied Gerta for a better mall. Penn-Can, she explained, was the best she could do. Santas with more seniority drew the assignments in the new malls. “Besides, you’re our Primary at Penn-Can. Do you know how rare it is for a new hire to be a Primary?” A “Primary,” in the Blossom Hills vernacular, was the main Santa in the two-Santa rotation that every Santa Squad required. The Primary worked the day shift; the Secondary Santa worked the evening shift. And the Primary, Gerta continued, was afforded certain privileges.

“Like what?” I asked.

“For starters, the Primary gets to make ‘The Arrival,’ ” she said.

The Arrival, Gerta explained, was the moment when Santa arrived at the mall for the first time. “If you haven’t seen one before, let me tell you, it’s an epic moment,” she said. People apparently showed up by the hundreds for The Arrival, in every mall, regardless of its condition. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you tell people when and where Santa is going to be, and without fail they will be there, going completely bananas,” she said. There was, she said, nothing more coveted among the Blossom Hills Santas than The Arrival. “Some Blossom Hills Santas have been with us for years and have never gotten an Arrival. You? You’re getting one your first time out.”

The Penn-Can assignment was sounding more appealing to me all the time.

“And are you ready for some even better news?” Gerta said. “Because of a scheduling hiccup, your Arrival is happening first, before any other mall in Central New York.” My Arrival, she explained, would occur the Saturday before Thanksgiving, while every other mall in the area would have their Arrivals the Saturday after Thanksgiving. “Since Blossom Hills always tries to make the first arrival in a region special, we’ll be bringing you into the mall in an antique fire truck.”

I said the words, “Are you kidding me?” again and again into the phone. “I am most certainly not kidding,” Gerta said. I was beyond elated. After the weeks of existential angst I’d endured at the closing-for-the-season Roaring Twenties-themed restaurant, my life seemed to have purpose again, even if that purpose was to be dressed as a beloved mythical character while being transported in an antique vehicle. I saw myself ringing the bell—clang, clang—and waving wildly to children while saying, “It’s me, Santa!” All my woes—well, most of my woes—disappeared.

I peppered Gerta with a series of rapid-fire questions: Would the truck be going through the mall itself? (Yes.) Would I be driving the truck? (No.) Why not? (Because, you’ll be too busy being Santa. That’s why.) How would they even get something like an antique fire truck into the mall? Was there some kind of antique-fire truck entrance that I didn’t know about? (That wasn’t really something that I needed to be concerned with.)

“Listen, all you have to do is show up next Saturday morning by 9 a.m., ready to get into character,” she said. Then she hung up the phone.

Time to find out what stage 9-6 has in store for us. Donkey Kong is up in his stage-top perch standing next to a switch which does two things: one, it raises and lowers one of those store-front barriers in front of Pauline (she’s open, she’s closed, etc.); and two, it extends and retracts a bridge across a bed of sharpangles at the very bottom of the stage. Also at the bottom of the stage: our hero, Mario. In between these two sworn enemies: five lengths of electrical wire, a single platform, and a pair of enemies (one walking steer skull and one slow-moving knight of some kind). Let’s begin.

Electricity courses through the bottom three stretches of wire in the form of a spark that makes an eerie, wavering here-comes-the-spark sound, which is without a doubt one of my favorite sound effects in the game. These electrical sparks run the length of each wire, right to left, in unison every five seconds or so. Avoid these sparks at all costs lest you’re curious to see what Electrified Mario looks like. Hint: He turns all black and smells like the sky after a lightning storm. Climb up the power pole on the bottom tier and onto Wire One. As we all know by now, pushing the directional pad up and holding it causes Mario to spin on the wires. Once you’ve got a head of steam going on Wire One, hit the jump button, and Mario will sail all the way upwards and connect with Wire Four, just beneath the platform.

There is no electric spark to worry about on Wire Four, but what you do have to concern yourself with is the walking steer skull, which constantly makes loops around the level. Naturally, the laws of gravity do not apply to the steer skull, so around this time he’ll be traveling up the righthand wall and heading towards you. Once he reaches the platform, he’ll turn and travel along the underside of it. Because of the strange shape of his steer-skull head, he will connect with your dangling Mario. If he does, it’s game over.

What you need to do is this: quickly climb to the left until you’re above Wire Three (the third highest wire starting from the ground up). Wait for a spark on Wire Three to pass by, then immediately drop down in the wake of it. This can be tricky, because you’ll need to, 1. hit the jump button to cue Mario to let go of Wire Four, and 2. once he’s in free fall, press up on the D-pad again ensuring that he connects with Wire Three.

Once you’re on Wire Three, you’ll want to quickly climb to the left, lining up Mario so that, when he spins and flies upward, he does not connect with the platform above him. Once he’s airborne, push the D-pad to the right. This will cause Mario to curve a bit during his ascent, taking him back over solid ground again, and guaranteeing that he eventually lands safely on the platform.

The slow-moving knight will be patrolling the platform. Hop over him, climb the electrical pole, then eek your way out onto the the fifth and final wire, a.k.a. The Angled Wire. We’ve seen this type of angled wire before. What you want to do here is get a slow spin going—trust me, less is more with this spin—then launch Mario so that he lands directly in front of Pauline. If you get too much of a head of steam going, you’ll sail clear of Pauline and into the clutches of Donkey Kong. D.K. will toss Mario into the air like he’s the bride’s bouquet at a wedding. Again, use a soft touch on the wire, and you’ll be fine.

What a thrilling moment this must be for Pauline, seeing Mario come flying in like Superman and sticking the landing directly in front of her like that. There’s got to be hope in her heart after seeing something as awesome as that.

Three more stages to go, Pauline.

I was sitting with the Elves, even though, in my heart, I still felt certain that I was a Santa. The Elves were predominantly short men and women, several of whom smelled strongly of alcohol despite the early hour. One of the Elf applicants juggled silently in the corner. On the opposite side of the room sat the Santas. What a pious and self-satisfied lot they appeared to be. One Santa in particular looked so majestic that in my mind I began referring to him as Majestic Santa. Majestic Santa had so many of the qualities of Santa—the twinkle in the eye, the sturdy knee to sit upon—that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I couldn’t have been the only person in the room who, at least for a couple of seconds, entertained the notion that Majestic Santa might actually be the real Santa.

When I reached the section of the paperwork that required me to check a box for my desired Santa Squad position—Helper Elf, Photographer Elf, or Santa—I hesitated, my pen hovering above the page.

“Check ‘Santa,’ ” the juggling Elf applicant advised. He introduced himself as Terry, then said, ”Aren’t you a little tall to be an Elf anyway?”

Before I had a chance to answer, a woman across the table from us put down her crochet hooks and said, “Ignore him. Terry’s just trying to get in your head. Terry, we discussed this in the car.”

“We’re not here to make friends, Carla,” Terry said to the woman. “We’re here to get jobs.”

The door opened. Majestic Santa was ushered inside. We could hear the man in the pinstriped suit ask Majestic Santa if he’d parked his sleigh in the mall’s underground garage. Majestic Santa let out a jovial ho-ho-ho at this question. The door closed again. Well, there goes the Santa position, I thought.

Terry and Carla, I learned, were local actors who also were husband and wife. Though they weren’t dwarves or midgets—both must have been around five feet tall—they’d had prominent roles as lead Munchkins in a recent Syracuse Stage production of The Wizard of Oz. Terry and Carla were called in next. They were interviewing as a team. “I’m Tinsel the Elf!” Terry said. “And this is my lovely wife, Mrs. Tinsel!” The door closed behind them.

When Terry and Carla emerged, Terry mouthed the words “You’re a Santa” at me one last time before leaving. Or maybe he said, “You’re an asshole.” I couldn’t be sure which.

Finally, it was my turn to enter the room and find out if I was Santa Squad material or not. The man in the pinstriped suit introduced himself as Mr. Thomas. He was the Regional Coordinator for Santa Squads for all shopping malls in Central and Western New York State. “I notice here that you haven’t checked off a box on your application forms,” he said. “What is it that you want to be?”

Though my chances were obviously nil, considering all the magnificent Santas they had to choose from out in the waiting room, I explained to him that I very much wanted to be a Santa.

Mr. Thomas looked at Gerta. The two of them smiled at each other. “Well, we’re both extremely happy to hear you say that,” he said, to my complete surprise. Then he lowered his voice and leaned across the table. “Those guys out there? They’re—how can I put this politely?—not young anymore. They think they want to do this job, but 45 minutes into their first shift, and they’re sound asleep inside the costume.”

“It’s true,” Gerta added. “Or else they lose their patience with the children. We had one Santa in Pennsylvania last year who was the most beautiful Santa I had ever seen. Zeus would have be jealous of the beard this man had. But by noon on his first day, he’d thrown his hat on the ground and walked out.”

“Blossom Hills learned from that moment,” Mr. Thomas said. “We learned that we need younger men to take on the burden of being Santa.”

They asked me, on the spot, if I’d accept the burden of being their Santa for the holiday season. “Of course I will,” I said, shaking Mr. Thomas’ hand.

On my way out, I looked a little more closely at the remaining Santas. Mr. Thomas and Gerta were right—these men were already fading. More than half of them had nodded off. One Santa candidate was snoring loudly, his false teeth hanging loose in his open mouth.

I noticed the seat where Majestic Santa had been sitting. There, in the fabric, was a large round dark spot that could only have been a pee stain.

Time for stage 9-5. This is what we’re dealing with today, folks: Donkey Kong is at the top, Mario at the bottom, and in between the two mortal enemies is a digression of crooked platforms all attached to one another via ladders. D.K. rolls barrels from his stage-top perch, and Mario, as he journeys up the crooked platforms, must avoid them. Sound familiar? It should. This is a super-sized version—it sprawls over two full screens of gameplay—of the very first level in the game.

Without rogue birds, or quick-footed steer skulls, or seed-spitting plants to concern yourself with, this revised original stage—which is downright spare when compared to some of the more recent overly busy stages we’ve endured—shouldn’t give you too much trouble. The key here is knowing when to press forward and take the barrels head on and knowing when to hang back and let the barrels run their natural course.

Pro Tip: Only jump the barrels if you absolutely have no other choice. Confession: I did lose a Mario in today’s stage, only because I was impatient and pressed forward when all of my Donkey Kong instincts were telling me to hang back. (A pair of barrels traveling in close succession—too close for fat little Mario to jump—steamrolled him.)

As in the first stage of the game, just as Mario gets close enough to catch a whiff of Pauline’s seductive perfumes, D.K. grabs her and climbs away. Four more stages to go, people.

She instructed me to bring a current resume and two pieces of identification to the Shoppingtown Mall management office at 10 a.m. the next morning where a Blossom Hills representative would apparently determine if I was Santa Squad material or not.

The next morning I woke up early, combed my hair, put on a sweater, then proceeded to print out copies of my resume on my mother’s temperamental dot-matrix printer until I finally got one that was somewhat legible. Then I made the hour-long drive into East Syracuse.

The mall’s management office was located at the end of one of those shadow-filled side hallways in Shoppingtown that no one ever set foot in. I knew I was in the right place when I spotted a hand-written sign taped to the wall that said “BLOSSOM HILL CASTING CALL.” The words “casting call” filled me with dread. I had my moments now and then, but I was far from being what you’d call a natural performer.

I opened the door onto a small office which featured a desk and a waiting area which held around a half dozen chairs. A short, stocky woman in a business suit named Gerta introduced herself to me as the Blossom Hill representative. “And I’m the fun, exciting, dramatic Scott Jones,” I said, echoing the ad in the paper and immediately regretting the decision to do so. I already saw myself back out in the parking lot, starting up the car, making the long, lonely drive back home. To my surprise, Gerta instead gave me a warm, toothy smile. “You know,” she said, leaning in close and whispering, “I actually wrote that ad.”

“It’s a very good ad,” I whispered back. Then Gerta handed me some paperwork to fill out. “Find a seat and let me know when you’re finished,” she said. That’s when I noticed that every chair in the waiting room was not only occupied, but occupied entirely by elderly men with well-groomed, snow-white beards and plump, round bellies. I thought to myself, There is probably no place on earth right now with a higher concentration of Santa Clauses than this room.

It was clear to me that all of these men would have to die of heart attacks for me to have a remote chance at this job. I stared at the Santas for a few seconds, waiting to see if any of them actually would die. None did.

I informed Gerta that there were no more seats, and that I should probably be leaving anyway. There was no point in wasting anymore time here.

“Nonsense,” Gerta said. “We still have plenty of seats left in the conference room.” She led me around the corner and into the conference room where 10 more Santa Claus dopplegangers were gathered around a long, wooden table, along with an assortment of non-bearded, un-plump men and women who were obviously there for the Helper Elf and Photographer Elf positions. Recognizing where my true place was in this world, I took a seat among the Elves.

And now, it’s time for something completely different. With its brick backdrop, low lighting, and lengths of chains dangling from the ceiling (11 chains in total), stage 9-4 is either one of two things: one, Pinhead’s private residence; two, Donkey Kong’s secret S & M room. Fact: after 95 stages, this game can still surprise me. I like that. Let’s begin.

Notice those tiny squares with the key-shaped icons in their centers? There are six of those in total. What you must do is push those key squares upward along the chains and into the key-shaped slots at the very top. You accomplish this simply by climbing underneath them. Each key-square that reaches its destination at the top of the chain triggers one of the prison bars around the dancing, preening Donkey Kong Junior at the top of the screen. Getting all six key squares to their destinations at the top of the chains lowers all the bars, trapping D.K.J. inside.

Sounds simple enough, no? If this game was an informercial, this would be the “but wait, there’s more” part. One: D.K.J. is flinging magic mushrooms all over the place. They’re easy enough to avoid, but should you come into contact with one when you’re high off the ground, you’ll shrink to the size of a hamster, lose your grip on the chain, and plummet to your death (complete with a tiny, hamster-size you’re-dead halo above your tiny corpse).

Oh, and one more thing: there’s a bird’s nest on the lefthand side of the screen. Whenever Donkey Kong pulls the switch he’s standing next to, a bird pops out, squawks once, then begins flying horizontally across the screen. When the bird detects Mario in the vicinity, it pauses, hovers, then—ker-plop—drops a death-dealing egg in Mario’s direction.

Once the bird reaches the far right side of the screen, it will stop, turn around, lower itself a tick or two of its own volition, then make another horizontal pass across the screen. D.K. will then pull the switch a second time, triggering a second bird, which instantly doubles your bird headaches for this stage. Again, for the most part, step lively, keep your eyes open, and use your well-developed Donkey Kong instincts here. Keep on climbing—Pro Tip: grab two chains at the same time (one in your left hand, one in your right) for a remarkably quicker ascent—keep on pushing those keys up the chains and into their keyholes, and before you know it D.K.J. will be behind bars. Which is, I must say, a satisfying sight.

Once this is accomplished, Donkey Kong grabs Pauline, then climbs through the top of the screen, leaving his “friend” D.K.J. behind. Might this be the last time we see D.K.J.? Locked up inside his little cage?

Let’s run the numbers for this section:

Stage 9-1: 145 seconds

Stage 9-2: 172 seconds

Stage 9-3: 168 seconds

Stage 9-4: 149 seconds

Grand total: 634 seconds. Number of Marios in my Mario Reserves: 26.

The final gauntlet of stages is upon us, folks. If this were a road trip, we’d be driving by a billboard right now that says, “LAST CHANCE TO SAVE YOUR GAME FOR NEXT 500 MILES.”

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.

Note the placement of the four extend-o ladders. That is your path, young acolyte.

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…”

Because of the overwhelming number of patrons, every bartender on staff had to work on Friday and Saturday nights, including my favorite bartender, Kristin. Kristin was only a year or two older, but she was leagues more sophisticated than I was. Evidence of her sophistication: she’d backpacked across Europe. More evidence: she was the only person I knew who owned several Peter Gabriel albums. Still more evidence: when I complained that I didn’t have anything good to read that summer, she gave me a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Yet what I liked most about Kristin was that we always had a lot of fun together. It was a kind of giddy, surreal fun that I’d never really experienced with anyone before. During one of my solo weeknight shifts at the bar, I’d used my fire prevention poster-making skills to make up a mock label for one of the empty vodka bottles. I wrote the word “RED EYE” on it, added some crude drawings of barrels, and cowboys and a covered wagon, then filled the empty bottle with Sprite. When I saw Kristin the following Friday night, I showed her the bottle. “If things get too hectic in here tonight, take a shot of this,” I said. “It’ll take the edge off.” She laughed, then went back to rinsing glasses.

The bar was packed that night. The legendary Central New York humidity was unbearable. A fist fight broke out near the front door around 9:30. The band played “Twist And Shout” not once but twice, back to back. “OK, that’s it, I can’t take it anymore,” Kristin said, slamming a pair of empty shot glasses down on the bar. She grabbed the bottle of RED EYE, and filled each glass to the brim. As the crowds around us waved their dollar bills in our direction, trying to get our attention so that we’d pour drinks for them, Kristin and I touched our Red Eye-filled shot glasses together, and downed them. Then we both winced and clutched our chests, trying to outdo each other with our melodramatic reactions to the taste of the RED EYE. “That’s it, I’m never drinking Red Eye again,” she said. “That shit will blind you.”

It’s time for us to have a go at stage 9-2. I realize that I’m probably jinxing myself by saying this, but the hell with it, I’ll say it anyway: I lost one Mario in the first TOWER stage. And today’s stage? I completed it on my first attempt. So what’s going on here? I traveled all this way, to the intimidatingly named TOWER, to have my Donkey Kong skills, which I’ve been honing for the past three months, put to the test. That hasn’t happened so far.

In today’s stage Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior have once again joined forces. Donkey Kong’s purpose is to hurl a death-dealing spring again and again. We’ve seen these hurled springs before, and at this point in the game, we should know how to handle them. But more on the springs in a moment. Donkey Kong Junior’s purpose? To grin and push-pull a switch which extends and retracts four bridges all on the right side of the stage. Naturally, the position of those four bridges determines the path that the bouncing spring takes. When the bridges are retracted, the spring simply bounces twice before safely vanishing into a pit. But when the bridges are extended, the spring takes a couple of errant bonus bounces. The rule of the spring is this: The more times a spring bounces, the more chances it has to connect with Mario.

Move forward cautiously, always keeping an eye on the path that the spring is traveling along, taking note of where it lands when it strikes the ground. Wherever it is, whatever it’s doing, realize that at some point you’ll have to confront it, crouch a tick in front of or behind its ground strike, and allow it to bounce safely over your head. Knowing where it bounces and when to crouch are the keys to reaching Pauline.

Climb the short ladder all the way to the right of the stage. This is a so-called “safe place.” Wait here until D.K.J. extends the bridges, then take the following ladder up to the now-extended bridge. Hustle across. Take a moment to watch the spring. See where it bounces? Hurry to the spot directly in front of where it bounces. Crouch. And wait. (Sproing.) Doing the crouch-and-wait as a death-dealing spring clears Mario’s head is truly one of the most exhilarating moments in the entire game.

Then, as Donkey Kong is readying another spring, hurry to Pauline. That’s 94 days in the books, people. Once again, at the risk of the jinx, I’ll say this: This is the best you’ve got, 1994 Donkey Kong? Part of me, no kidding, is hoping that this jinx that I’m supposedly afraid of actually comes true. I want a Donkey Kong stage that makes steam come out of me ears. I want a stage that makes me pull my toupee off my head, hurl it to the ground, then jump up and down on top of it.

Is that too much to ask?

I purchased several books on the subject of bartending, including the hardcover version of The Mr. Boston Official Bartender’s Guide, which featured an illustration of the iconic Mr. Boston on the cover wearing his trademark top hat. I challenged myself to memorize one new cocktail each day. I’d look at the recipe for an Old Fashioned before going to bed at night, then see if I could recite the drink—two ounces of whiskey, two dashes of bitters, splash of water, teaspoon of sugar, fruit, etc.—from memory at breakfast the next morning. I also borrowed some joke books from the library, and memorized  jokes which I could entertain my customers with. (“A man is in the audience at a magic show. The magician pulls a rabbit from a hat. The man shouts, ‘Hey, buddy, how did you do that trick?’ The magician says, ‘If I tell you, sir, I’d have to kill you.’ The man says, ‘Then would you mind telling my mother-in-law?’”) Finally, I picked up a bunch of second-hand neckties from the Salvation Army and wore them to work each day.

I knew my drinks, knew a handful of sub-par jokes, and classed up the place with my 25-cent neckties, but it was obvious that I was missing the one key ingredient that every bartender needed: a warm, welcoming attitude. From the beginning of my shift to the end, I was never anything less than 110-percent surly behind the bar. If you needed a drink from me, I automatically resented you. People would whine and wave their money in my direction, trying to get my attention. I served people reluctantly, like a warden doling out bowls of gruel on a prison ship. Then I got angry when they’d finish their drinks and depart without leaving me a tip I felt I deserved. Another cheap so-and-so, I’d think, wiping up the mess they’d left behind.

A recently divorced man named Tony began stopping by the bar on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. At first, I looked forward to seeing Tony, and would even start pulling a draft for him from the tap before he’d even taken his seat. “You’re going to love this one,” I’d say, skating a coaster across the bar and setting his glass on top of it. “A man is sitting in the audience at a magic show…”

But a few weeks later, I began dreading the sight of Tony for some reason. One night I’d ducked into the walk-in to restock the Budweiser, and when I came back out, boom, Tony was sitting at the end of the bar, patiently waiting for me. “Where you been? I thought I was going to have to serve myself,” he said. “Hey, got any new jokes tonight, buddy?” I told him I didn’t have any new jokes. I don’t know what changed, or when it changed exactly, but I could barely hide my contempt for him. I kept myself busy behind the bar, straightening bottles, rinsing glasses, trying to avoid him. “Listen, when is your night off?” he called down the bar. “I was thinking, maybe you could come down to the campground, I could fix some dinner for us, and we could have some laughs together. What do you say?”

“Sure, Tony, we’ll figure something out,” I said, dunking another dirty glass into the dishwater, while thinking, That’s never going to happen. A few weeks later, Tony must have finally gotten the hint because he stopped coming around altogether.

One night I stopped at another local bar for an after-work drink. As I sucked down my Coors Light with my co-workers, I noticed Tony sitting alone at the end of the bar in front of his drink. I stood there, contemplating whether or not I should say hello to him, or maybe even sit with him for a few minutes. Before I could make up my mind, I looked up again and realized he was already gone, his trademark two-bucks-pinned-under-his-empty-beer-glass left on the bar. I never saw him again.

Let’s talk about stage 9-1. Welcome to TOWER, the final milieu in all 101 stages of Donkey Kong. Possible nicknames for today’s stage: “Two Really, Really Long Conveyer Belts,” and “Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior: Together for the First Time Ever.” Yes, D.K. and D.K.J. both star in today’s stage, dancing around together in the upper-tier, obviously drunk on power. D.K. jumps into the air every four or five seconds, and when he lands, he sends an earthquake-like jolt through the stage that, 1. dizzies Mario, rendering him dizzy and helpless for several seconds, and 2. causes all kinds of Mario-killing trash to fall from the top of the screen. Way to avoid being dizzied and subsequently crushed by Mario-killing sky-trash: by keeping an eye on D.K., and jumping as his ape feet are about to land. If you’re in the air when he lands, you won’t feel the impact of his jump. Meanwhile, the always-rotten (but somehow still lovable) D.K.J. is busy pushing and pulling the switch next to him which extends and retracts a bridge that seals off the upper tier of the stage, preventing Mario from reaching Pauline.

Here’s what I did to resolve this situation: starting in the lower lefthand corner of the stage, I stepped onto conveyer belt 1, moving against it like a hapless salmon trying to swim upstream. I jumped whenever D.K. was about to land, and I hustled, being careful to avoid the trash falling from the sky. Don’t linger. The longer you linger, the greater the odds are that you’ll be stuck by falling sky-trash. At the end of the conveyer belt is a rising-falling monolith. Get close enough to its path so that you trigger it—but not close enough to get squashed by it—then, once it falls, hop onto it and ride it up to conveyer belt 2.

Note the retractable barrier in front of Pauline up above you? You’ll need to get rid of that in order to complete the stage. Travel from left to right along conveyer belt 2, again doing the swimming-upstream thing, jumping when D.K. jumps, and avoiding more sky trash. Also: there’s a mummy-like creature walking towards you. Don’t worry, he’s relatively harmless. Jump over him, and continue to work your way to the left, until you reach a switch.

Pulling the switch retracts the barrier in front of Pauline. With the switch taken care of, travel back the way you came along conveyer belt 2, avoiding the mummy again, the sky trash, etc. When you reach the right side, trigger the monolith (but don’t get crushed by it), climb onto its back, and ride it up to Pauline. Sweet victory is yours. Unless, of course, the extendable-retractable bridge that D.K.J. is in control of happens to be extended. If that’s the case, you’ll need to kill a little time until D.K.J. is in the mood to pull his switch again, retracting the bridge, and allowing you and monolith safe passage to the upper-tier of the stage. Then sweet victory really will be yours. A mere seven more stages to go, folks.