Marble Madness: Reconnecting Through Pixels

Kevin tossed and turned in bed, before waking bleary-eyed.

“Another one of your dreams, baby?” his wife Clara asked from the other side of the bed.

“Yeah, crazy,” Kevin said looking around the room “It was like I was climbing a pyramid, but this snake was chasing me up, and for some reason, I tried to outmaneuver it by going sideways and then down again. We ended up running all over the side of this pyramid, and my feet were covered in some fine yellow sand, so I could see everywhere I’d run.”

“Crazy!” said Clara sarcastically

Clara got up to make breakfast, for their son Jaime.

“What are your plans this weekend?” Clara asked “It’s just I feel like you need to take Jaime out somewhere, do something with him, like sports? I’m just worried he’s not having a great time at school, and you know, he’s 13 and he doesn’t have many friends. And you’re either out helping your dad or you’re down at the bar with your friends every weekend”

“What can I say?” Kevin asked “I didn’t have many friends at that age, apart from Dale, Rodney…. Oh and Gord. And I hated sports! Still do”

“You watch Basketball all the time” protested Clara.

“Yeah, but I don’t play it,” Kevin said.

At work, Kevin spent the whole day worrying about what Clara had said, ‘What did I do at that age?’ Me and Dale used to make up games, tell stories, watch movies, thinking about it now they were great days. Better than doing this boring job. Jaime’s got it sweet, he can just hang out at school and come home and sit in his room, he’s always on that phone of his, I bet he’s talking to friends on that. That’s probably just the way kids hang out these days. He’s not depressed’

Kevin arrived home early, tired from his mundane job in the warehouse. Jaime got home 10 minutes later.

“Hey, son” Kevin called out, trying to sound as chipper as possible “What are you up to this weekend?”

Jaime walked past looking at his phone.

“Yeah,” he grunted and trudged up the stairs.

Kevin felt angry and rejected, and considered shouting after him ‘I asked you a question BOY!’ But thought better of it, he didn’t want to remind himself of his own dad. ‘Maybe he is a bit down, come to think of it I’ve never seen him with any friends, and I’ve never heard him talk to any friends on his phone, I’ve barely heard him talk to anyone for a while, maybe he’s gone mute, in some sort of budding teenage protest.’

“You’re spending the day with him tomorrow!” Clara insisted after Jaime had once again slumped off upstairs immediately after dinner.

“He’s just not that fun to be around at the moment” Kevin sulked.

“FUN!” Clara exclaimed “He’s your son Kevin, not one of your drinking buddies; no one ever said he’d be fun”

“Fine,” Kevin said

Kevin lay in bed trying to think of ‘activities’ he and Jaime could do ‘We could see who could run across the road the fastest, or we could try and jump the creek down in the woods?’

That night Kevin dreamt that he was sliding down a giant gutter, slipping from side to side, when he hit the bottom he landed on a platform but carried off slipping. A giant green worm sock somehow leapt out towards him and opened a gaping gullet.

Kevin woke up sweating.

“What was it this time?” said Clara

Kevin explained his psychedelic dream.

“Oh, you mean like that stupid game you used to play when you were a kid?” Clara said tiredly

“Oh yeah” Kevin responded in amazement “Marble Madness, Jesus I’d forgotten about that game”

“Kevin you were playing it a few weeks ago, remember when you and Dale got drunk and decided to dig out your old Atari” Clara rolled her eyes

“Oh yeah, we still have it, Jaime would love that,” Kevin said excitedly

“I don’t know,” Clara said pessimistically

###############

Kevin woke up early the next morning and rummaged about desperately digging out his old Atari, he found the cables and the controller. Got it set up on the old TV they had in the attic, and started it up.

‘Bllididii Bling’ the start-up noise sent shivers down Kevin’s spine almost immediately.

“Hey, Jaime” Kevin called down from the attic “Come up here!”

‘What the hell does he want now?’ Jaime thought.

By the time Jaime had mustered the effort to traipse up to the attic Kevin had got Marble Madness started up, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the old TV. Hunched forward in one hand grasping the joystick intensely. Looking like an image of himself at 12 years old, only considerably fatter.

“What the hell is this” Jaime said

“This, my friend, is one of the best, most frustrating games ever made,” Kevin said, not looking round

A jarring electronic ‘Brr Brr Brr Brree’ noise came out of the TV. “Ah, stupid,” Kevin said annoyed. “I just died, here you have a go” Kevin handed the controller to Jaime

“This is a game?” Jaime said looking unimpressed and unsure. “What’s the point of it”

“Course, here it’s real simple” Kevin held his hand out for the controller “I’ll show you, you’re this littler Marble thing, right, so you’ve got to just navigate the Marble through a series of channels and platforms without faaalllliiiing OFF” With that Kevin slipped off the edge of a platform on the first level.

“Oh yeah real simple,” Jaime said condescendingly.

Jaime took the Joystick and navigated quite smoothly to the end of the first level.

“And I’ve never even used one of these stupid sticks before,” Jaime said smugly

“Joystick, and sure you have when we went to the arcade,” Kevin said

“That was like 5 years ago Dad” Jaime Protested

“It was last year Jaime, now let me tell you, level 2 is harder, and level 3-4 and so on,” Kevin said

“Sure if you’ve got the reflexes of… a… elephant!” Jaime said trying to think of an animal he could compare his dad to that might hurt his feelings.

“Sure thing you little… chipmunk,” Kevin said also struggling “You’ll see, tell you what I’ll bet you 5 bucks you won’t get to level 5”

“No problem,” Jaime said settling down next to his dad. A huge smile spread across Kevin’s face.

################

“Whoa whoa whoa! That’s total BS”

 Clara hears coming from the attic. ‘I hope they’re not fighting up there’

Clara quietly tiptoed upstairs to sneakily listen in.

“So how the hell do you kill the green sock creatures?” she heard Jaime ask

“You don’t” Kevin responded “You’ve just got to evade them. Be sneaky, like a ninja.”

“That’s stupid” Jaime responded. “So you can’t kill anything, the main character is a ball, and the story is just, rolling around trying to get to the end? No wonder you like this game, Dad” Jaime said cheekily.

“What the hell does that mean?” Kevin asked

“Well, you know, you’re like a big ball, just aimlessly rolling around,” Jaime said with a smirk

“Well when you do something interesting with yourself, I’ll take that,” Kevin said with a touch of annoyance “I’ll tell you what, if you can beat level 5, You’ll be a bigger man than me!”

“I doubt it” Jaime scoffed sarcastically

 “I know because level 5 is impossible!” Kevin said matter of factually.

‘He’ll never beat level 5’ Kevin thought, it’ll take him all night to get to level 4.

Kevin and Jaime sat playing, talking and jeering at each other back and forth, they took turns when anyone died and got excited when either of them got to level 3. ‘This is what it’s all about’ Kevin thought. ‘It’s not the game that’s good; the game is just a lubricant, to ease the flow of conversation. If you’re both focused on a common thing you can talk freely, I suppose it’s like when people would sit in groups and stare at a fire. Like a focal point to take the pressure off of a conversation.’

“Are you guys coming down at some point?” Clara called up “I’m going to bed”

“In a bit, mum!” Jaime said.

Kevin noticed that Jaime was messing with his phone when it wasn’t his turn.

“If you’re finding it boring we can go to bed,” Kevin said.

“No I’m just messaging Ben, to see if he wants to come over at some point and play,” Jaime said

“Ben?” Kevin asked “He a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, he’s a bit weird though, that’s why I thought he might like this game,” Jaime said

“You’re a bit weird” Kevin retorted.

“Good one Dad” Jaime responded

##############

Jaime came down late for breakfast the next morning. Looking exhausted

“You weren’t up all night playing that stupid game were you?” Clara objected

“Did you get to level 5!?” Kevin asked with anticipation.

“You left him up there?” Clara said annoyed.

“It got to 3 am, I had to go to bed,” Kevin said sulkily

“Yeah, give him a break mum he’s getting old… And fat” Jaime said laughing

Clara Laughed

“Did you!?” Kevin asked again

“No of course not, that game is impossible!” Jaime said

Clara got up to make some coffee.

Jaime leant in and whispered to his dad in a hushed tone “I got really close though”

"Did you get much sleep, at all?" Clara said irritably

 “I had the weirdest, most messed up dream!” Jaime excitedly replied

Clara rolled her eyes.

Kevin smiled.

The end