Based on a true story, embellished from a separate friend in a separate quarantine.
by kelseydeemer
It has been sleeting for two days. No sign of sunshine and no sign of change.
We all know the five stages of social isolation: Denial, Sleep, Horniness, Boredom, and Acceptance. It is hard to say exactly when, (I have lost my sense of time almost completely), but I hit boredom a little bit ago.
It has been sleeting for three straight days. I have watched my professor’s lectures. I have played monopoly. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time making that tik tok whipped coffee.
Bored out of my brains and sequestered to my childhood home, I started digging through old video games.
My search was fruitful.
Although I left my Nintendo DS in Living/Learning, rendering not one but two Cooking Mama games completely useless, many Wii games were excavated from my mother’s basement. Honorable mentions include Epic Mickey, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, and Disney Sing It! – High School Musical 3: Senior Year.
But the most notable by far was Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.
I couldn’t believe how I had forgotten her, how the dust had collected on her cover and on her memory. I popped in the cd and sat in anticipation. Memories of cantina music and collecting studs flooded back. I navigated through the menu and found my saved game from 2012. Suddenly I was faced with an incredible dilemma; the game I once loved so much, that held so much nostalgia, that could numb the boredom that coursed through my veins, had a 69% complete status.
How could it have been left that way? It seemed almost impossible. Too good to be true. Yet there it sat, a laughable 69% staring me right in the face.
What kind of monster would I have to be to destroy something so precious? My skills had no doubt improved in the eight years I’d been separated from Lego Star Wars, playing it now would certainly lead to a change in my completion status. 69% would be blown away, never to be seen again.
Reader, I am both selfish and have no respect for anything precious. With only three moment’s hesitation I hit that load game button so goddamn quick. Lego Star Wars has provided me with an abundance of entertainment in these trying times. This short story serves as an ode to the 69% completion that sat on my family’s Wii for an undetermined amount of time. She served her time well. May she lay to rest.
Categories: kelsey deemer, reflections