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.

I had a stack of “A Special Moment” entry forms to burn through, so I decided to first test out a couple of avant garde approaches. I made the tree white and topped it off with a crimson star. My parents were friends with a young couple who had no children and who insisted on erecting a white Christmas tree in their living room every year. Visiting their house, as we routinely did each Christmas, was the most boring night of the year for my brother and me.

Once I was finished, I realized that the white tree gave this otherwise warm, familial scene an air of death and decay. So that was the end of the white tree.

I also experimented with expressions. I etched worry lines across the mom’s face. I made the dad look vaguely hungover and haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. Also: I didn’t understand why this dad was wearing pajamas and slippers and a robe. My own father strutted around the house in his jockies, showing off his pronounced beer belly.

In the end, I decided to go with a more traditional approach: green tree, happy, blank-faced family. I was obsessed with Mad Magazine back then. One of the aspects of Mad that I adored was how each page was always stuffed with details. The longer I looked at a page, the more details I would be able to suss out. There were recurring mainstay features like Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side Of…”, but off in the margins were Sergio Aragones’ tiny cartoons. Example: one Aragones cartoon featured Tarzan swinging on a vine only to look below and realize that a man had hung himself using the same vine. No, it’s not exactly a knee-slapper. Still, there was a wry, sliver of narrative there that I appreciated.

I decided to add that degree of detail to my my otherwise pedestrian entry form. I drew a present in the shape of a whiskey bottle, wrapped up in festive red and white paper. (There was always a whiskey bottle-shaped present underneath our tree every year.) I drew a yawning cat off in the corner. I added stockings to the fireplace mantle, and made them bulge at the bottoms, down in the toe region, imagining that they were stuffed with navel oranges, the same way my mother filled up our stockings with oranges.

One of our neighbors who worked in Rome agreed to drop off the entry form for me. He stopped by our house on his way into work the next morning to pick it up. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” he said, taking the envelope from me. Then he backed out of driveway and was gone.

Now, it’s time to have a go at stage 8-4. Well, well, well, if it isn’t Donkey Kong himself. How nice of you to put in an appearance. Now, prepare to die! (Or, at the very least, get chased off!) Today’s stage is a horizontal endeavor spread out across two screens of gameplay. It’s not really all that different from previous showdown-style stages. There’s D.K. There’s Pauline. There’s the switch that D.K. pulls at odd moments. There are the four bridges—two longer ones in the middle tier, and two shorter ones bookending the top tier—that extend and retract contingent upon D.K.’s switch pulls. All you need to do to get this stage sorted is this: cross the two longer bridges in the middle tier all the way to the left, climb the ladder up through the shorter bridge over there, and pull the switch in the corner. That raises the barrier that Pauline is being protected by. With the barrier gone, retrace your steps (climb down the ladder, etc., cross the two longer bridges again, etc. etc.) and climb the ladder on the right side up through the shorter bridge over here. Give Pauline a kiss and you’re done.

See? Nothing we haven’t seen before, with one notable exception: there are five fleet-footed porcupines running amok in this stage.

You know what? I’ve got to be honest with you guys, I don’t even know if there are five porcupines. That’s just a guess. Sometimes, the way these damn things were bearing down on me, it felt like there were six, or eight or even a dozen porcupines. This stage is infested with these damn things. Worth noting: porcupines are not bound by the laws of gravity. Walls? No problem. Ceilings? No problem. No matter where you are in today’s stage, trust me, these buggers are coming for you.

Now, it is possible to jump over the porcupines, but only if they are bearing down on you one at a time. If there is a group in the area, forget about it. Fat Mario simply isn’t nimble enough to jump, land, and jump again before one of these beady-eyed bastards gets him. Your only hope is to use the vines that are scattered throughout the level. These things will save your life. In fact, whenever you’re in trouble, or whenever you’re wondering what to do next, head for the nearest cluster of vines and climb into them. Once you’ve got a plan in place, let go of the vines and press on.

Completing today’s stage feels like 50-percent luck and 50-percent skill. You can be doing all the right things, making all the right moves in today’s stage, and still wind up dead. No matter. Keep going, keep moving, keep using those vines, and when you do finally reach Pauline, don’t be surprised if you say the word “phew” out loud for the first time in your adult life.

Totals for the first section of ROCKY MOUNTAIN:

Stage 8-1: 157 seconds

Stage 8-2: 107 seconds

Stage 8-3: 162 seconds

Stage 8-4: 149 seconds

Grand total: 575 seconds. Number of Marios remaining in the Mario Tank: 25. (Note to self: I really need to do some “Mario harvesting” soon.)