Dr Mario
“I just think,” I heard my live-in BFF say to Bae, “If you’re going to do something, do it well. Do you not feel embarrassed if, like, we don’t do somewhat well? I feel embarrassed for you.” They were playing Nintendo in the other room: Mario Land, a team game, in the hope that it would feel less competitive than dog-eat-dog Mario Kart. “You’ve become quite strange,” he said. “Yes,” she said, “I want us to do very well together.” “I want us to have fun together.” “…well I don’t.” She paused. “My family don’t let me play games. It’s a thing. Like, I’m always the banker.” I had known her for many years, but I’d never heard her like this: raw. Millennials can fool their friends, family, and even themselves about who they really are — but no one can fool Mario. We’ve been using the racing game as an inter-personal barometer since we began (oh why did we begin?) to exist. Many of us can track our lives in significant Mario games, from early tutelage from older cousins with classic consoles, to a kind of rudimentary mating ritual 15 years later. For some, not playing as a princess served as our first Bambi steps into third-wave white feminism/a queer identity; for others, the kids picked last for sport, it was a taste of what it was to win. Then the co-ed teenage games charged with hormones, followed by the college games fuelled by ennui and a vague sense of student-ish responsibility to procrastinate. And then lockdown. And the treacherous muscle memory that belies protestations that you haven’t played in years. Of course, there are 32-year-olds who never played. And yet this absence remains fundamental to their identity. Time after time they will have explained, no, they never did — and the story about why (a family entirely consisting of women/ religion/epilepsy) will tell you why they are who they are today. When we talk about Mario Kart, we talk about childhood, family, relationships, growing up. Mario is Freud and we’re all on his couch: Mario, I won once 10 years ago and it terrified me and I never did it again. What does it mean? Why do I resent the boosts to help me catch up? Why don’t I think I deserve to succeed? Am I afraid of trying my best? Mario? Who am I? Mario?