A ten-year-old child sits in the computer den of his family's apartment. It's behind the McDonalds, and it smells of solder and duckweed and old carpet. The room is full of wicker furniture and wiring and unsorted resistors and other bits of robots - he and dad wanted to build one that could follow a line on the ground, but dad will probably die before they finish.
He's learning to play the clarinet and is very bad at it, his pet hermit crabs are molting and he's worried about them and about a lot of other things, the hospice nurse brought peanut butter M&Ms to share, his tomato plant grew its first tomato and the kid from the marina ripped it off the vine and threw it on the ground just because he was told not to. Everything is upside down and life will never be the same again.
He sneaks into the den at 11PM, three hours after he should be asleep, and covers the computer's speaker with his hand to mute Windows Vista's startup noise. The keyboard is very loud - he's bookmarked all his favorite Flash game sites so he doesn't make noise using it. And for an hour straight, he plays Dolphin Olympics 2. Gentle on the keys - his parents' bedroom is right next door and they will hear. He gets to Neptune once but never further. He'd seen a grainy video [i]proving[/i] that if you jumped really really [i]really[/i] high, you'd get to the Restaurant At the End of the Universe. It was kind of his life goal.
Hours and hours over months and months. Higher and higher and faster and faster. It's freeing, it's simple, it's [i]ridiculous[/i] in retrospect how latched on to this game he was. This and Virtual Villagers. It's the escapism, I think. [b]So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.[/b] He is very jealous of the dolphin.
That night, his mom finally catches him, and sends him off to bed, and he never sneaks over to play again, because he is very guilty for waking her up. She gets so little sleep these days. He never has time during the day to play. He misses the dolphin.
...
...I'm 28 years old, it's 11PM (three hours [i]before[/i] I should get to sleep), and I'm visiting my mother in her house for the holidays. I'm sitting in her computer den, one room away from her bedroom. I could go downstairs, but this is a game to be played in the dark and in the quiet. My keyboard is quieter, these days. I'm not as quiet, these days. I pay taxes and have a job and all of that, and I will never ever ever own a piece of wicker furniture.
The room smells of chocolate and pine and mulled cider. (The robot was indeed never finished, and sits still in a box in the attic.) I don't need the escapism anymore, not really, but here we are, that kid and me, sitting down to play Dolphin Olympics 2. Well. [i]Dolphin Up.[/i]
I'm still terrible at the clarinet, my cat is shedding but I'm not as worried about her, and I've bought my own peanut butter M&Ms. This game isn't a lifeline anymore - and what a ridiculous one it was, really! But no one will come in now, to tell me to go to bed. That 10-year-old, for once, has all the time in the world.
Here's to you, kid. You made it. And I'm gonna make it to the Restaurant for you.
...
...Yeah, still jealous of the dolphin.
(......Alright, this concludes me waxing poetic about Dolphin Up and Dolphin Olympics 2. I cried over for a solid hour last week after finding this on Steam, very manly tears I promise you, and needed to put those thoughts somewhere. Thank you for reading?)
