PixelVixen707

Just joining us now? Catch up by clicking here and reading from the bottom.

Wow. How can I put Funspot into words? It’s a museum with no ropes and a shrine with no rules. It smells like your socks and your dreams. It’s decades of summers crammed in a warehouse-sized recroom with floor after floor of every blinking, beeping diversion ever made, where the very young and the very old while away the rainy days and hope the weather stays bad. The owners brag it’s the world’s biggest arcade and, if it’s not, the other one must be in heaven.

Dad and I found our Mr. Do!, tucked in the corner of the American Classic Arcade Museum on the top floor. If you’re looking for it, it’s around the corner from Rampage and a couple cabinets down from the Donkey Kong where Steve Wiebe got his kill screen. And of course, once we found it, we played a round. (Here’s the scoreboard - I’m RAW. Dad didn’t rank.)

Bonus, we showed up during the annual classic games tournament, which was a serious and glitz-free affair. The games for the competition were lined up along a wall beside a miniature golf course. A row of guys - all guys - bang at the machines for four days, and the best combined scores are announced Sunday at 5 PM. Doubt we’ll make it to that, though - we’ll be too busy getting dad his first tattoo. (I won the bet, remember?)

If you saw King of Kong, then you know that people come here to score. And minus the stars, almost everybody from that documentary was at Funspot yesterday - like Walter Day in his ref uniform, or Brian Kuh, the local hero who once broke 16 world records in a single day. I saw several guys perched at games with video cameras over their shoulders to catch their every move. A Frogger contestant seemed to be starting a new game every time I walked by - if at first you don’t break a world record, try, try again - but a Ms. Pac-Man player had hit 750,000 before we left, and showed no signs of stopping. The ghosts were whizzing around him and the power pills had long since lost their punch, yet he could sit patiently in a corner, waiting to strike. His preternatural calm was chilling.

I was livetweeting for most of the day. But the fun really started when VOIDMunashii asked me to check out his old favorite, Rampage - and then everyone else started sending me requests to try all their old favorite classics, which I played, when I could find them. So if I helped bring back a little of your childhood, well, I owed you one. After all, this whole month you guys have brought my youth crashing back at me.

|

“Remember the time I came home, stumbling drunk, and you waited until I threw up on the lawn before you carried me inside?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do? You didn’t look like you could make it to the toilet.”

Me and dad, reminiscing.

After the arcade wore us out, Dad and I grabbed cardboard pizza at Funspot’s concession stand, the Braggn Dragon. Old mementos of summers at Lake Winnipesauke hung on the walls. The nostalgia of other people’s vacations was suffocating.

“I seem to remember I got off pretty easy for that one,” I said. “I was grounded for maybe, a week?”

“Believe me, the hangover was punishment enough. You couldn’t get off the couch all day. You just lay there watching golf with me.”

I grimaced. “Fate worse than torture.”

“You keep telling me you were a lousy teenager,” said dad. “But you were actually a good kid.”

“Not for you guys! Remember the time I vanished for a week, to tour with that band? I didn’t even call. I wasn’t even 17.” A week sleeping in a van and on roachy couches. Cheap beer, public toilets, no weed, and I got laid twice, badly. So much for the groupie life.

Too bad I never learned to play the guitar.

“You won’t believe this, but deep down I trusted you,” countered dad. “Remember that one boy who stayed with us for a month? He had family troubles, and you talked us into letting him sleep in the basement.”

Oh – I hadn’t thought about him in forever. What was his name -

“His name was Skull. I think you were seeing him, but that’s not why you brought him home. He was fighting with his step-dad – ”

“And he had a month to go before he could bail for college. Yeah. I remember that.”

I refused to have sex with Skull under my parent’s roof. Second base was the limit. So we would crawl out my window, onto my roof, under the tree branches. I was a screw-up, but I had rules.

“But I didn’t really hit bottom until college,” I said. “Remember that semester I just didn’t go to classes? I only took the exams. Hungover.”

“But you passed,” he reminded me. “You always made your own path.”

“I sure did. And it was a lousy one.”

But this was getting to be a bummer. So I changed the subject.

“You lost your job,” I offered. He grimaced. He knew this would come up. “What are you going to do now?”

“Well,” he sighed, “probably run around the country searching for people’s old junk. Could you write me a reference?”

Picking dad up at the airport, I saw he looked even older than at Christmas. Not that the redeye does anyone favors. But he’s lost weight. His hair is thinner. I found him at baggage, just standing there, staring at that carousel. It made me kind of angry.

“Some newspaper family we are.  You’re retired, and I’m just a factchecker. I can’t even pick up the torch for you.”

“I don’t think the newspapers will survive. Not the way they are, anyway. You were using Twitter today – that’s how everyone will be reporting soon. ‘Fire in street. Run!’”

I laughed but didn’t let it go. “You said I shouldn’t care what you think. How could you say that? You know, you’re pretty much my hero,” I said, dropping my eyes, embarrassed.

But it’s true. I’m killer at games, at mastering rules and made-up scenarios. I meet people over the intrawebs. I’m in love with an art therapist who loves that I shoot zombies with his little brother. I’m a stunted child in a body that’s not getting any younger.

Not like dad. Interviewing governors. Interviewing presidents. He can walk in a room and turn everyone he meets into a story.

I always dreamed of beating him at his own game, and I know I never will.

“You know, you also underestimate what you do for other people, like Zach. You’re very good to him. You bring people together. Don’t dismiss that.”

“Great, I’m buffs and heals. That’s a second-tier gig.”

“You get it from your mother.”

Frowning. “I don’t want to settle for that. I’m not going to stay home and rub Zach’s shoulders when he gets home from a hard day at the looney bin.”

Bratty again. Why do I become the obnoxious little kid, every time we’re together?

“Rachael,” said dad, “the other day, when I said you shouldn’t look to me for affirmation? I need to tell you what I meant.

“You know I love you. Because you’re my daughter, but not just for that. I’ve watched you your whole life. I was paying attention even when you didn’t think I was. You’re bright, and you’re bored with what’s in front of you. And I don’t think a newspaper job is the answer. But what matters is, you’re kind, smart, sweet - ”

“That’s me at 7. I feel like I peaked then, and that’s still how you remember me.”

He smiled, so widely. “That’s not true at all, Rach. Everything you are today, I saw in you when you were little. You grew into exactly the woman I hoped you would. And I couldn’t be prouder.”

… Okay.

“Now come on, let’s play air hockey, so I can beat you like a rented mule.”

And he did.