The Yellow and Dark Blue Dilemma

Warnings: Long post (2000 words). Includes potty talk. One of my most embarrassing moments.
Challange: Theological metaphor. Try and guess it.

My mother worked at Carbones Pizza and Video Arcade in 1983. I was 13 years old at the time and feeling a little nervous because I didn’t know how to be a teenager. So, I learned how to kill time at the video arcade. With her employment came certain privileges for me. I got to eat lots and lots of pizza. That was good because I loved pizza. But the better of the perks from which I benefited was the unending supply of video game tokens. She would give me fifty tokens at a time and tell me to go and have fun. I realize now it was her way of keeping me out of trouble after school, but I thought she was the greatest mom ever. OK, I still do. She’s great.

It was around this time that varieties of Donkey Kong games were rolling into American arcades. So, one day I thought I would try out my skills with the new and exciting, Donkey Kong Jr. In this game I was the little kong trying to save my father, the big kong, from the evil Mario. The game was set in the jungle. Playing as the little monkey, I would climb vines, knock down fruit for points, and clear screens, but sadly, I never saved my father. This game was based on not winning, just hoping to win at some point. Interesting concept.

Anyway, I played it a couple of times and found I was a natural. Who knew I had a God-given propensity for Donkey King Jr? After a couple of games I decided that I would go for the high score. I reached into one of my token-bulging pockets for one of those fake gold coins, put it in the slot, and I was ready to go. Preseason was over and I was playing for real now. Nothing was going to stop me from putting my initials in the top spot. CJG was going to appear in huge letters for everyone to see.

This was important for me - very important. In fact, it was essential. I was a teenager now I needed to act like one. All of my guy friends were getting girlfriends and getting noticed. I was still feeling quite invisible with the ladies. I needed to remedy this emerging problem. What could I do to get some attention? How could I get noticed by cute girls?

I had a plan. If I landed the high score on this new game, then the girls would be impressed and notice me. I imagined girls huddling around close by the game, cheering me on and other girls standing off a bit, talking, giggling and pointing over my way. “Hey,” they would say to each other, “look at that guy on the Donkey Kong Jr. game. He’s kind of cute." "I heard he has the high score, you know.” “Seeing CJG on the high score drives me crazy.” Then they would ooh and ahh. Everyone knows that hot chicks dig the video game stud. I could never match Ryan C. on Robotron or Al S. at the Wizard of War, and no one could touch Mike P. at Dragon’s Lair, but I had a corner on the Donkey Kong Jr. scene. I was poised to break into the big time.

As you can tell, my sense of self-delusion was more than a little exaggerated. I genuinely believed that I would get noticed by cute girls when I achieved the high score on this stupid game. But I have got to tell you, there was no greater motivation for a 13 year old boy than the idea getting a little attention from Lori B. or Kristi P. (10th graders by the way). I was determined to make this my in with the ladies.

That particular day the arcade was relatively quiet with a very sparse crowd. In fact, there were only a couple of teenagers and a few younger kids there that day and that was it besides the guy behind the ice-cream counter. He could see me from where he stood behind the counter as he wiped dry those tall milkshake glasses. I’m not sure how I thought these girls would ever know what I was up to since the place was practically empty. I guess I just figured high scores were announced globally over a special news bulletin. They would hear about it and flock to the arcade. Or maybe I was thinking that those high scores were not erased when the lights were turned out at night. Whatever the case, I believed that these girls were just waiting to notice me. What was really amazing was that these hottie girls in my mind never even went to the arcade. Reality didn’t seem to matter to me one bit. It was more the idea that was my reality that mattered.

I cleared the first screen without losing a monkey. I did a little dance of self-congratulation. I cleared the second screen, still with my first monkey. Man I was good. It wasn’t until the middle of the third screen that I noticed a slight pressure on the inner wall of my bladder. No big deal. I can hold it.

I kept on like a champ, clearing screen after screen, dropping fruit and chasing away the evil Mario. Yet the further I got into the game, the more I felt the pressure from within to release. This pressure was no longer a mere discomfort, it was beginning to be an urgent request from within.

I cleared another screen and did another dance. Only this time it was not the self-congratulation dance. No, this was the I-have-got-to-hold-my-pee dance. No one saw this dance, or so I thought. The ice cream man was wiping the counter with a silent snicker.

I was caught up in the ultimate dilemma. No one in the history of Donkey Kong had ever gotten off to such a start as I had. At the same time I needed to go pee really bad. Now I understand that for most people this is not a dilemma. You let the game go and you take care of business. I had 50 tokens for crying out loud, I could play this game as many times as I wanted. But you have to be a sane, non-teenager who is comfortable with who you are in order for this not to be a dilemma. I was blessed with none of those luxuries. I was a self-diluted, adolescent male, rife with a crippling insecurity and a desperate craving to be noticed. I wasn’t exactly a good candidate for rationality. So for me, this was an incredible dilemma.

I cleared another screen, twisting and turning my legs for maximum urinary track blockage. The little intermission between screens seemed to last for minutes. During this little intermission I did a full body wince as I thought for sure it was all coming out right then. The wince worked and bought me some more time. I started into the next screen when a little boy, about 8 years old, walked up to watch me play this game. I cleared a screen and did my pee dance, hopping up and down, bending over, contorting my legs, huffing and puffing. The boy just looked at me like you might look at a homeless man walking quickly down the street cussing at himself. Pity, caution and a little fear.

I held my breath and started into the next screen. I was making my way through the screen just fine when I felt the most terrible sense of relief I had ever felt in my life. My bladder released and sighed. A warm, wet sensation made its was down my leg changing my light blue jeans into dark blue jeans.

“Crap! You take it.” I said to the boy watching me as I offered for him to continue my game.
“Really? Wow. Thanks,” he said.

I ran across the arcade and down the hall to the bathroom. I was well into a full pee at this time. Once it starts, the point of no return has been crossed. I shouldered the door open while trying to unbutton my pants. Blasted buttonflies! Finally, I got to the urinal at the same time as my bladder had completely emptied itself. I stood up close and…nothing. There was nothing left to give.

I couldn’t believe it. I slowly buttoned up my sopping jeans and limped over to the mirror (though my legs were not injured – it was a limp of humiliation). In the mirror I saw a 13 year old boy who had just peed his pants trying to get the attention of a girl in quite possibly the stupidest schemes ever devised in the history of carbon-based forms of life.

Sadly, my problems were not over. I faced yet another daunting problem: How do you leave a public restroom after you have peed all over yourself? There is really no formal etiquette to fall back on here.

I needed to get my pants dry. The wet, dark blue portion of my jeans that trailed all the way down my right leg was so obviously pee generated that there was no way to pass it off as some kind of cool style of blue jeans. I looked for paper towels. None. This was an air dry only restroom. I went into the stall and started to dry my jeans with toilet paper. No use. It just wadded up and made things worse. Then I thought about that air drier. I hit the button and stood up close. Bad idea. What if someone walked in and there I am blowing myself with the air drier? There is no good explanation for hat.

I began to panic. I looked in the garbage can in desperation. Nothing. I looked behind the toilet, under the sink, behind the door. I don’t even know what I was looking for, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there.

Then I got a brilliant idea. I froze in my tracks and slowly turned my head and looked over at the sink. It was the single best if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them moments of my life. Here was the plan: I would intentionally soak myself with water, all over, and then blame it all on a faucet malfunction. Yes, yes, this would work. No one would know what really happened. Faucets are known to malfunction all the time. Why didn’t I think of this before? I’m a genius. No, super-genius.

So I went to work. I turned the water on and flung handfuls of it onto my pants and shirt. I got some up in my hair. I wanted to make sure that my mid section was not the wettest part of me. After a minute or maybe a couple of minutes, I looked in the mirror and was satisfied. I was so wet in places that pee could never reach that I could never be accused of what I had really done to myself. The only logical explanation was that darned faucet malfunction.

I took a deep breath and prepared to exit the bathroom. I needed to make this real. I flung open the door, almost violently, threw myself out of the bathroom, and yelled, “The frickin’ faucet is screwed up! Gosh!”

As I did that, the ice cream guy came walking down the hall. He saw and heard everything He looked at me and laughed, the kind of laugh you give when you have just heard the worst and most pathetic lie of your life. It was an incredulous laugh of pity.

I was busted. He witnessed everything. In all of my efforts to get noticed…well, I got noticed. I got unforgettably noticed.