No, it was not the greatest of holiday seasons for me this year. The holidays are never easy for people at my station in life, i.e. the people who do not have families of their own, the people who now reside on the opposite coast from where they were brought up. I did what I always do: I flew the 3,000 miles back to Upstate New York. Not because I necessarily wanted to, but because I had nothing better to do. And because I don’t have enough guts to tell my 65-year-old mother that I’m not coming home. And because part of me always hopes that going home will somehow be this great time again, even though it has not really been a great time in a long time.

My guitar teacher goes down to Mexico by himself each year over the holidays. I have no idea what his Mexican vacation is actually like–for all I know he wound up with bedbugs and was menaced by bandits–but I picture him in a Corona commercial, staring peacefully out at the ocean. Though I have no love for beaches, I like the idea of that–going somewhere that I want to go, doing something that I want to do. I don’t get much time off from work, so it only seems logical to be more selfish with my days.

Instead, what I did was this: I waited in an impossibly long line at the airport to check in for my flight. I paid $25 to check a bag and $25 more for five more inches of legroom. Then I consumed a $9 Whopper at high speed at the airport Burger King before reporting to my gate. Only once I was on the jetway–the unsteady little portal that connects the terminal to the plane–did I suddenly experience the dizzying feeling that something was seriously wrong. After taking a quick personal inventory, I realized what it was: I no longer had my shoulder bag over my shoulder, i.e. the bag that contained my iPad, my various game machines, my eye drops, my travel documents, etc.

It is not an overstatement to say that my heart nearly stopped. My Whopper-heavy stomach dropped clean out my body. I fought my way through the jetway line, elbowing through the throngs of wheelie bags and duty free-toting fliers, trying to get back to the terminal, and back to the Burger King where I remembered last seeing the shoulder bag, praying for the first of many Christmas miracles.

Which brings me to level 0-3. The entire level is perched above a pit of menacing triangles. Yes, this is a Game Boy-era game, so a little imagination must be brought to bear on the proceedings now and then. Donkey Kong, at the top of the gameplay screen, is hurling what appears to be a small spring, which always follows the same arc-ing, bouncing pattern: first bounce, second bounce, then into a pit.

A sombrero is positioned above Mario on the lower lefthand side of the screen. I grab the sombrero and earn a few extra bonus points. Why a sombrero–or an umbrella a la the previous level–is an appropriate manifestation of bonus points is beyond me.

After navigating a pair of elevator-style lifts and a couple of rogue fireballs, I climb the long ladder on the far side of the screen and nab the 1-up. Then it’s time for me to take on the aforementioned bouncing spring. Reliving one of my favorite moments from The King of Kong–the moment when Steve Wiebe uses a grease pencil to articulate the spring’s arc on the gameplay screen–I pause at the exact spot where I know the spring’s arc will just barely clear Mario’s head. Fssst–there goes the spring. Then I hustle up the ladder. Kong ceases to hurl springs. Instead, he grabs Pauline and disappears offscreen. End of level 0-3.