Well, for starters, I guess you could say that I picked the wrong day to quit smoking. In fact, I went for all of about three hours without so much as one drag of a cigarette and that was about three hours too long, so I figure it just wasn't meant to happen. It's just as well, seeing as I've never really been able to stick to anything that I've started.
Fifteen years ago, my mother took me aside and told me some thing to the effect of,You're a no good bastard and I must've been a lousy parent to raise a shiftless piece of wastage as you, you little sumthin' or other."
I agreed with her wholeheartedly, as painful as that admission may seem. See, I failed out of grade school at the age of ten, and subsequently went on to get fired from about ten or eleven food service jobs before the work force kind of spat me out into my living room., where I played a lot of Nintendo, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and collected a thick coating of dust. I remain proudest of my dust acquisition due to the fact that no one else, to my knowledge, has ever actually ever collected dust for real.
My damn Mom made me go to night school for about thirteen years, until I got my G.E.D. and reclaimed my rightful seat on the couch in my living room, where I now had a SUPER Nintendo to keep me mentally challenged. Oh my God, I loved that Super Nintendo. I miss it so much sometimes.
During the shamefully brief era of the Super Nintendo, I achieved my second biggest accomplishment (the biggest being my layer of dust, which slowly disappeared during the first two years of night school.) My second biggest accomplishment entailed my battle with this thing that every zoologist I know scoffs at the existence of, but the Super Nintendo and I know better. Oh boy, do we ever.
All right, All right. I'm bullshitting too much. I tend to do that at times, and especially when I tell this story that started when I first bought the Super Nintendo entertainment system. I played Super Mario Land as often as I could, and within two straight months of playing, my skills helped me arrive at the final board. Yoshi, the sultan who makes the mistake of fucking with Super Mario and his brother Luigi, was about to succumb to my mad skills, when someone rang the doorbell and I had to pause the game.
Before I even had a couple of minutes to scrape myself off of the couch, the visitor kicked open the door and ran into the house, screaming something about a "critter." The guy had a piece of his left leg torn out and he fell over onto the floor doubled over and died right there in front of me. Yoshi's ass was mine.
After exactly ten uninterrupted minutes of active game play, some weird thing ran into the house and into the kitchen, where it disemboweled my dog, Scott, and ripped my mother's head off. I heard their screams and barks, but ignored it all for the sake of eleven full, uninterrupted minutes of game play.
After tearing my house apart for five minutes, the shadowy entity entered my living room and rudely walked right in front of the television, causing me to lose one of my extra lives. Turning to me, the apparition pointed to my empty pack of cigarettes and yelled the word "critter" over and over. Its loud, screechy voice sounded ominous, yet it blocked my concentration, so I paused the game and addressed the black nightmare before me.
"Yo, do you mind?" I scolded.
"I'm trying to play this game here, and I'm all out of critters. I quit smoking today. Sorry, bro."
The thing, which stood about seven feet tall, and had glowing orange eyes It looked a little bit like a cross between the killer eel from the water world in Super Mario 64 and a molten shadow formed into charred flesh. If only I had a cigarette to give to this grub, the events of the ensuing five minutes may have turned out differently!
After I refused this thing a cigarette, it committed the most unpardonable sin of smashing my Super Nintendo entertainment system underneath its foot. Nothing had ever hurt me so much in my life. Tears welled up in my eyes. My guts churned. I felt as if I would have a stroke.
Then, an overwhelming feeling of rage just possessed me.
I ripped the motherfucker to shreds faster then I'd ever done anything before. Within one minute, I'd reduced the intruder to pieces. it felt like that video game where you fight Mike Tyson, only this foe didn't fight very well. My kicking of this things ass remains the second biggest accomplishment of all time, next to the dust thing I mentioned earlier.
The ensuing years have thus far provided no insight into the events of that day, but I always make sure that I have at least one extra cigarette on me in anticipation of some similar experience occurring. Nowadays, I just sit around the living room, but I play the Nintendo 64 instead of my late Super Nintendo. Sometimes, I think back on the critter monster and the Super Nintendo and then I just smoke a cigarette.