For years I’ve told people I wasn’t allowed to have a Nintendo as a kid, a story that’s meant to explain my general ineptitude with videogames. But like so many of the stories we tell about ourselves, this one isn’t entirely true. When I was in sixth grade, my parents made an offer: if I could bring home straight A’s for a single six-week grading period, they’d let me have a Nintendo, though I’d have to shoulder a portion of the cost with money from my allowance.
My parents weren’t anti-videogame, per se. I think they just saw the Nintendo as a useful carrot in their ongoing battle with me over my “potential.” I heard a lot about my potential as a kid, to the point where I began to picture it in human form: a high-achieving doppleganger, a ghost sibling who followed me around, reminding me by his goody-goody example of all the ways I was falling short.
My mother liked to remind me I’d scored “exceptionally high” on an IQ test in preschool, though she never told me the actual number and, curiously, I never asked. If I ever complained that such-and-such friend had gotten the same grades I did, and that their parents didn’t seem too exercised about it, my mom would nod and make a thoughtful face. “Well, but they don’t have your brains,” she’d say. Or: “You know, that might be the best they can do.” Though she’d always follow this up with something complimentary about the kid in question—they were quite the little athlete, or exceptionally well-mannered—so I could see she wasn’t being mean, only honest.
I played Super Mario Brothers at friends’ houses after school, and at the Navy Exchange, where they’d set up a free console. The Nintendo was new back then, and we were all learning by trial and error. Each time I played, I managed to get Mario a little farther along in his quest for the princess, but it was impossible to keep up with my friends, who could practice whenever they wanted. They’d get annoyed at my incompetence. “No, shoot that guy, don’t jump on him, for God’s sakes.” Once I’d exhausted my three lives, the controller would be snatched from my hand, and because they were so much better than me, it would be a long time before I’d get it back.
In third grade, my violin teacher told my mother I was her most gifted student, but she could tell I wasn’t practicing. In fourth grade my teacher told my parents I had A’s on all the tests, but zeroes on all the homeworks (when I suggested, over dinner that night, that perhaps this meant the homeworks weren’t that important, in the grand scheme of things, my father laughed and then told me it wasn’t funny). My fifth-grade teacher provided a similar report, but with a more hopeful spin. Eventually, she said, I’d find something I was passionate about. “I wouldn’t be surprised to open the paper one morning and see ‘Senator Michael Ingram,’” she said. “Or even president!”
God, how my mother loved that story! Though I could never get over its absurd premise: that somehow Mrs. Watkins would only find out her former student had been elected senator—or president!—when she opened the morning paper and stumbled upon the news.
Those early, side-scrolling Nintendo games didn’t require talent so much as persistence. Over time you learned the patterns, and you developed a kind of muscle memory, so that eventually you could run through the levels without any conscious thought. In that way, I guess it was similar to the homework assignments I continued to blow off throughout middle school, even as the parental lectures took on increasingly dire tones. If I didn’t get my grades up, I wouldn’t get into the accelerated track in high school, and if I didn’t get into the accelerated track in high school I’d be relegated to some cut-rate regional college (even in their worst nightmares, my parents apparently couldn’t imagine me missing college altogether).
Before the Nintendo came along as a possible carrot, they’d tried a number of sticks. Though grounding me, or taking away my TV privileges, tended to backfire, because I loved to read, and I think my parents knew they weren’t supposed to take away their child’s books. In fourth grade my mom tried an ultimatum with the violin: either I could commit to practicing one hour a day, or they’d stop paying for lessons. But that backfired, too, because I’d grown bored with the violin, and I was happy to quit.
Writing all this down, I feel like kind of an asshole for putting my parents through the wringer. It’s also a bit bewildering, because I really wanted that Nintendo, and it shouldn’t have been so hard to get A’s. Yet I could never seem to pull it together. I remember feeling bad about myself a lot, but feeling bad didn’t seem to help, either.
Coincidentally, it was also in sixth grade when I discovered I had an aptitude for “creative” writing. Our English teacher let us write stories, and we could read them aloud if we wanted. I still remember the thrill of making my classmates laugh, of holding the attention of a room with only my words. If I ever demurred about reading, they’d insist, one time even chanting my name until I gave in. I was never an athletic kid, so that was the closest I ever came to being carted off a football field or a basketball court, like a character in a Matt Christopher novel.
Though the thing I eventually came to love about writing was the challenge of it, and how engaging it could be, at least if you took it seriously. Even now, it’s one of the few activities that can hold my full attention for long stretches of time. A little cubby in my brain I can disappear inside of.
In one version of this story—the one posited by Mrs. Watkins, and preferred by my parents—I was “too smart” for school, not challenged enough, and so it couldn’t hold my interest. But that strikes me as overly simplistic. For one thing, being able to slog through life’s mundane tasks is an important skill. Also, while I eventually turned my academic life around, I still see that sixth-grader inside my adult self. I get bored with things too easily. I’m too often impatient, opting for short-term pleasures over long-term investment. Even in my writing life I see it—there’s the engagement with the writing itself, but also the lack of engagement with all the necessary busywork of building a career.
In 2008 I bought an old NES off eBay—the one in the photo at the top of this post. I’d gone through a protracted, messy breakup, and I was ready for the comfort of nostalgia. Or maybe I just needed a project with a defined goal. Each night I’d make a gin and tonic, put on some loud music, and work my way through those familiar worlds. It took longer than I care to admit, but when I finally beat the game I posted a photo of the screen to Facebook, along with an appropriately self-deprecating note. I didn’t let on how legitimately proud of myself I was, how good it felt to get the win.