It’s the dentist’s fault that I’m missing a chunk of my pinky. If he didn’t
have a Pac Man machine in his waiting room, this whole thing would have
never happened.
My kid’s dentist has the greatest waiting room in the entire dental industry.
A model train chugs around the perimeter. Airplanes are suspended from the
ceiling. Anything a kid could ever want is packed into this room, including,
of course, a Pac Man machine. It’s like the Neverland Ranch without the
freaky, singing pedophile.
My kid just had his first dental appointment…and he REALLY liked playing
Pac Man. So when I saw the home-version of the game, I just had to buy it
for him. I envisioned the two of us, sprawled in front of the TV, chasing
Inky,
Pinky, Blinky and Clyde. One of us getting steadily drunker while he assured
his wife that this was the “quality time” that kids crave.
The hardware concept was great. It was nothing more than a joystick that
plugged into the TV. Pac Man and several other “arcade classics” from my
junior high years were programmed into the control. No discs to lose. No
cartridges to buy. No other components that kinds would beg for later.
Simple.
I sent my wife and kids to the park, so could play with…er…make sure the
game worked. And it did. It worked great, except for one little thing. The
base of the joystick needed to be held in one hand, while the other hand
controlled the action. That’s fine if you have big, grownup hands, but would
be very frustrating to those in my family with small, three-years-and-eight-
months-old hands.
It needed to be kid-friendly, so I took the small, self-contained game, and
made it a cumbersome mess. I attached it to a small board. This gave it a
big, stable base, so it could be operated with one hand. (Ever notice how
the most pleasurable things in life can be used one-handed?)
During the course of making the base I had a little accident. I was using
a
Dremmel tool with wicked-sharp router head that spun at roughly forty-
million RPM…and I dropped it. The dropping wasn’t so bad, it was the
catching that caused the problem.
I caught it alright - right on the outside of my pinky. It took a dime-size
divot
out of my little finger, and instantly transformed my workbench into a miniature
Jackson Pollock in red. I supposed there are stupider things one could do
with
a Dremmel tool (trimming your pubes and cleaning your tear-ducts leap
immediately to mind), but few are more idiotic than trying to snatch one
out of
the air while it is running.
I felt like a dumbass. And my mood didn’t get any better when I discovered
that the only Band-Aids we had depicted Spongebob Suqarepants. Swallowing
my pride, I covered my new hole with the crazy-eyed cartoon Porifera and
finished up.
Amazingly, my family was still out, so I decided to play…er…make sure the
game still worked. I sat down, turned it on, and immediately broke the ball
off
the top of the joystick. Oh, I was on a roll.
Back out to the garage I went, searching for Superglue.
Superglue. Why WHY do we believe that you can use a tube of this stuff
more than once?! After ten minutes of angrily twisting, squeezing and prodding
it, I cut the end off with a packing knife and applied the glue liberally
to the
joystick. All this work really got the blood flowing in my hands. Spongebob
looked like he had a nasty shotgun accident.
I then took the whole thing BACK to the family room, plugged it in, and played.
Ten minutes later my family came home. Junior and I had a great time playing
Pac Man…after we got daddy’s fingers unstuck from the controller.
“The control is kind of lumpy, Dad.”
“That’s just a little bit of Superglue, son.”
“Why does it look like skin?”
“Look out for Blinky, son”
“What happened to Spongebob?”
“Why don’t you run out to the kitchen and get your dad another beer?”
Ahhh…quality time.