Tag Archives: Super Nintendo

Tongue glasses

If you don’t have perfect vision, that’s not such a big deal, you just get a pair of glasses, and then you can see things perfectly. What’s that? No, what did you say? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Maybe my hearing isn’t as good as everyone else’s. That’s not really a problem either. If you’re hard of hearing, you just go and get a hearing aid or a cochlear implant and, there you go, much better, now everything’s coming through loud and clear.

tglasses

But what about the other senses? Are you telling me that touch, taste, and smell don’t ever suffer like hearing and sight do? And say your taste buds aren’t fully operational, what are your options? Are you supposed to just go through life acting like everything’s OK? No, unless you’re a naturally gifted actor, which I’m sure you’re not, you might pretend like you can taste just fine. And so your mom surprises you one day, she made you your favorite pie, “And have a piece right now! I want to see the look on your face when you take that first bite!”

And you’re like, “All right mom,” because, yeah, you don’t dislike pie. Maybe you even tell yourself that you really like pie, that you love it. And so you cut yourself a huge slice, like a fifth of the pie. Your mom’s watching expectantly, you cut in and take your first taste. That smile, you close your eyes and you go, “Mmm, that’s delicious mom, thank you so much.”

Your mom’s still smiling, I mean, you’re smiling, to the rest of the world, you look like you might be enjoying yourself. But this isn’t the rest of the world you’re eating pie in front of, this is your mom. She knows you better than anybody. She knows what it looks like when you’re experiencing pure joy, that same look you had on your face when you were in the second grade, when there was a Super Nintendo wrapped underneath the Christmas tree that year.

All you talked about was asking Santa for a Super Nintendo, you wouldn’t shut up about Super Mario World and all of the different items and tools available in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” your mom would tell you as you cut out a full-page advertisement for the SNES from a Nintendo Power magazine and taped it up like a poster above your bed. “There might not be enough Super Nintendos for Santa to give out. That’s a really popular toy this year.”

But of course she got you that Super Nintendo. And even though you tried not to let it show, the doubt, that maybe Santa wouldn’t be able to make it happen right there, you went right for that box on Christmas morning, the only one that could have been a Super Nintendo. The wrapping paper went flying, but it was just a clothing box, just a couple of sweaters.

And after all of the presents were opened up, your mom couldn’t prolong her own need for that Christmas morning feeling any longer. She did the whole, “Wait a second, did you forget a present? What’s that over there?” routine, the cleverly hidden box, of course it was the Super Nintendo. That was the look, pure joy, of unadulterated bliss, and it would have been difficult for an outside observer to make a distinction between just who was happier that day, you or your mom.

But this? “Wow, great pie mom.” This was a joke. You’re not an actor, and even if you were, do you know how hard it is to fake that type of a reaction? Was your mom really expecting a repeat of December, 1992? Of course she wasn’t. But maybe if your reaction was just a little more genuine, if you could only fully appreciate the time and care that went in to making that pie crust, the delicate flavor profile of the strawberries balanced with the tartness of the rhubarb. Maybe you wouldn’t be wolfing it down as fast, like, OK, this pie is great and all, but I’m a little tired of having dessert.

And the worst part is, it’s not even your fault. How can your mom know that your sense of taste isn’t up to snuff? You don’t even know. It’s not like you started losing your flavor profile over night. It was gradual. You started ordering chicken and pasta when you went out to eat because, well, everyone else keeps raving about that smoked paprika dry rub or the artisanal veal bouillabaisse, but when you really take a bite, can you tell the difference? Besides the basics, the savory, the hot, the cold, are you picking out any separate tastes?

Of course you can’t. When it comes to the sense of taste, you’re like Mr. Magoo. You know, except that he couldn’t see. But whatever, he got some glasses and went about his life. Why don’t they make glasses for you? For your tongue? How many people are out there, disappointing their mothers and grandmothers on a daily basis, by pretending to enjoy food that they’re really not even capable of truly appreciating?

We need tongue glasses. Obviously we won’t call them glasses. Except if whatever technological advances that make it work happen to be made out of glass. Then we probably still won’t call them glasses, because it would be confusing with eyeglasses. Well, I guess it wouldn’t be that difficult to just say eyeglasses and tongue … no, you know what? Someone will think of a different name. But we’ve got to invent them first. Scientists, whoever invents what I’m talking about first, don’t forget to give me some credit.

I figure I’m about halfway to knowing how to do everything

I know I often talk and act like I’ve got everything figured out, but there’s so much that I don’t know how to do. I’m almost thirty, so assuming that I’ll probably live for another ninety years or so, if I calculate all of the things that I know how to do now, and how much time it’ll take me to learn everything else, then, yeah, I think I can still get it all done before I die. Obviously I wasted a lot of time when I was a little kid, learning how to talk, how to read, how to spend five years straight playing Super Nintendo. Everybody has to learn how to do the basics. I just wish it didn’t take so long. Two years to figure out how to get potty trained? That seems a little long.

But computers. I know how to use basically every computer. As long as the language is in English. You guys ever have one of those friends that takes your cell phone when you’re not looking, changes the language to Cyrillic, changes all the settings, makes the default brightness at the very dimmest, so you can’t see anything, turns it on mute, and then takes out the SIM card? Yeah, I’m not talking about those types of computers. And come on, that was a funny joke. They fixed it for you at the cell phone store, right? Well sorry you don’t know Cyrillic.

I don’t know Cyrillic. That’s another thing that I’ll have to learn. That and every other language. OK, maybe I’ll need to start living a little longer. Maybe I can just write off the language requirement. I mean, nobody knows every language.

Wait, wasn’t I talking about computers? I don’t know how to do any computer programming. But isn’t that just another type of language? Yeah, I don’t need to know programming. I figure once I learn business, once all of my business skills are in order, I’ll be able to pay a bunch of programmers to program anything I want.

Tennis. I’ve never even played tennis. I’m pretty good at Ping-Pong. That’s close enough. I was about to say that I’ve never even so much as picked up a tennis racket, but that’s not true. I think I was at a sporting goods store one time and I started playing around with a tennis racket on display, taking a tennis ball and bouncing it up and down like … what do you call those paddles with the string attached to the ball? And you’re supposed to bounce it up and down over and over again? Is it paddle ball? Those things are so lame. Just a total waste of the earth’s resources, making something so dumb and cheap. But yeah, I guess I really don’t know how to use those either. The sporting goods tennis racket story didn’t end well, by the way. It was a huge mess.

Now that I’m writing it all out, maybe I’m biting off a little more than I can chew here. I’m starting to panic. And the panic is only making me realize that I haven’t even begun to master any of those relaxation techniques I’ve read about online. Meditation? Medication? I’d go for either one right now. Just got to take deep breaths, drink a glass of water. But my back molars are so sensitive. I don’t remember eating ice cream and drinking cold water being such a chore. I always hear about old people and when their teeth fall out and they get dentures, how all of the sudden they love ice cream and cold water again because they’ve lost that dental sensitivity. And they come into restaurants by the dozens, immediately complaining about how it’s too cold in here, but then alternately complaining that the water isn’t cold enough, to bring them an extra glass of ice on the side.

But that doesn’t make any sense because I have great teeth. Some of the best. No braces. Barely any cavities. I say barely because I’m not counting the cavities I got when I was a little kid. Little kids are always too busy being defiant and not brushing their teeth and eating way too much candy. At least I was. I never learned how to do dental work. But do I have time to go to dental school? I’d have to fail out of medical school first. Ba-dum, ching!

Jokes. Check. Typing. Check. Internet. Check. Man, maybe I’m not going to be able to master everything. Should I just give up? Should I just try to focus on what I’m already good at? This has been a real eye-opener, this reflection, this self-assessment. Wait a second. Did I just learn and then master self-assessment? I think I did. There’s still hope. Maybe it’s not mastering everything, maybe it’s all about half-assing everything, learning just enough of everything there is to learn, the bare minimum spread out across an entire lifetime. I actually think I’m over halfway there. Maybe I won’t need ninety years after all. I mean, if I’m alive, that’ll be great. Bonus time to sit here and rub it in to everybody else how much I know, about life, about everything, literally every subject imaginable.