A Silly Letter to Senator Brian Schatz
The horrors of a 7-year old with unlimited funds, waging an impossible war on an 8-bit gorilla
Mister Retrops
April 23, 2024
Dear Senator Schatz,
Greetings, salutations, and all that other formal hullabaloo of which you might be familiar:
I stood there staring up through the steal beams at Pauline. We hadn’t known each other long (just the one day), and I didn’t even know her name yet (I just called her the lady), but we’d been through a lot together already. Poor Pauline ran back and forth on the top beam, waiting for me to rescue her. And heaven knew, I’d been trying. It wouldn’t even have even been that hard, if it weren’t for that blasted ape.
Just to the left of Pauline stood a pixelated ape, who beat his chest and through barrel after barrel down the slanted beams toward me. I had gotten pretty adept at jumping over the ones that weren’t on fire, and I could swing a sledge hammer better than any seven-year old should have been physically able, but the ape was relentless. No sooner had I made it to Pauline, then he would grab her and carry her off to a new construction site, and we’d start the dance all over again, but with a quicker tempo.
Other would-be rescuers had to pay a quarter a pop for their chance to rescue the fair maiden from the ape, but my dad worked in television, but he had a gift for fixing electronics. So, he moonlighted as an arcade technician, and while he worked on the machines, he gave me all the free games I wanted, and I used them all trying to conquer that dang gorilla, but I just couldn’t do it.
All I knew is that even with all the money in the world and unlimited plays, I couldn’t solve my problem. I was like the U.S. education system throwing more and more money at schools, lowering learning standards, and getting worse and worse results.
Of course, I had no idea that the only way to kill Kong was to reach screen 117 and rollover the 8-bit counter, effectively ending the game.
And I never got the chance to find out. Long before, I got that good at Donkey Kong, the arcade craze died, and the owner went out of business, ending my free game spree. Poor Pauline probably died up there on that high riser, and there was nothing I could do about it. Sad.
Well, at least that little simile I gave about the U.S. education system won’t end that way. I mean we can just keep playing the game forever. Our kids futures aren’t going to get stranded up on a high rise while some foreign country hammers us with superior testing barrels. There’s no Game Over coming. Right?
Dun! Dun! Dun!
Oh no!
Someone give me another quarter, quick!
Sincerely,
Mister Retrops