Donkey Kong Nostalgia

My friend, Megs', husband, Mark, is a video game lover. I think they have every gaming system you can have. You may recall that Mark actually made an arcade game for their living room. He mounted a TV in there, and somehow, some way, uploaded every game known to mankind in there. He even had old-fashioned Atari games in there.

I loved our Atari so much when I was a kid. We had Joust, Fantastic Voyage, and Donkey Kong, I think. I don't remember if we had Pac Man. And I don't think we had Frogger, either.

We had this baby-sitter who just sat and played video games the whole time when she was over. She completely ignored me, Nat, and Beads. It drove me crazy. One night, I threatened her: "If you don't get off that computer and play with me and Nat, I will write on your shirt."

"Yeah right," she said, without looking away from the computer screen.

"I'm getting the pen right now..." I cautioned.

"Whatever."

I clicked the pen in her ear. "You hear that? That's the sound of the pen that I'm going to use when I write on your shirt."

"Mph."

So I started writing on her shirt, on the upper back. I didn't know what to write, so after thinking for a minute, I wrote, "Karlenn and Natalie." I remember the shirt was yellow.

And, apparently, it was a one-of-a-kind shirt from China or Japan or somewhere. When she realized what I had done, she yelled at me. I was like, "Why did you let me write that whole thing down?"

"I thought you had the ball point clicked in, and that you were just faking me out!"

When my parents came home, she told them what I had done, and I remember getting into big trouble. I don't know if Mom and Dad paid for the shirt or what. Apparently, though, this incident didn't detract her from being our sitter. She did sit for us again. I remember this because she accidentally broke my arm. Another story for another post.

When Mark told me he had Atari games, I just had to try Donkey Kong:

I did really badly. :) It was fun, though.

Ben played something - I wasn't paying attention. By that time, Megs and I were chatting on the couch and I was snuggling her little teeny baby man.

Mark is cheesing it up in the background. He's funny.

Megs snapped this picture of Sadie. Ben did her hair that day, which was impressive to me:

It was so fun visiting you and playing with your new toy, Megs! We need to have you guys over. But I have GOT to clean my house and put away dang Christmas decorations first. :)