You ever been told that college is where you find yourself? I felt philosophically uneasy coming into freshman year. It wasn't a day-to-day stress kind of thing, but after being settled down so long in my satisfaction with my identity (to myself and to the outside world) it was a shock to suddenly have to feel the need to make sure I was in the right standing.
I found that I really wasn't far off the mark the first time around. Tonight, instead of going to the P2 party, or Joe's party, I went to my brother's apartment. There probably needs to be some background story with him. When we were both younger, we spent all the imaginable time we had together playing games. In the times between, when Kris was still a teenager, he just found addictions to games and played them obsessively until he felt he mastered them. He topped the best national score in Nintendo Power score for the Game Boy version of Tetris. He 100%'d the Zelda games, Pilotwings, and so on. By the N64 era, he really started to drop off, on account of attending college and so forth. He's managed to remain a Nintendo fanboy though, and every time there's a new Zelda or F-Zero game he picks it up and keeps up his habit. While I was playing every PC and N64 game under the sun in junior high and early high school, Kris focused entirely on F-Zero X and tried to beat all of the hidden Nintendo staff ghosts, the best recorded runs by the development staff on each course. He beat more than half.
For Christmas this year, I surprised him with F-Zero GC. I played it with him tonight and got addicted too. After less than an hour of playing, there we were, two little 20-something nerds, making charts of how to best completely beat the game with its new part customization feature. After what seemed like decades on hiatus from playing games hardcore with him, we were right back into the thick of it, kissing our GPAs goodbye, after an hour. Suddenly I felt like I had never lost myself to begin with; maybe I really just am a gamer through and through.
At 1:30 in the morning, Kris and I called it a night and I started to drive home, where I found another piece that felt missing: driving. As I drove home through southern Austin, on dark roads, Incubus blaring, downshifting into the curves to compensate for the rain, I just said to myself declaratively: I love driving. I love cars. The whole idea of getting a cheap Miata popped into my mind once more.
Throw all that fun together with a few moments to myself late at night (which I always appreciate) and I came home a damn happy camper. Probably a lot happier than had I gone to the parties.
Ah, the wonders that racing games can work.