/ . . you take the low road & I'll take the high road
The train ride was something brutal.
Maybe it was because being an aquatic horticulturalist wasn't offering as much job security as he would like, or maybe it was that the thought of spending a prolonged amount of time with Christa and her family was weighing heavily on him, but Myron D'Adagio was feeling down and had a feeling of slight foreboding all through the train ride from Boston to New York City. He sighed, looked out the windows, was even distracted for a little bit when an attractive young lady asked him to move over so that she could sit next to her friend, but the same thought kept coming back: his life was too predictable.
He knew that he would spend some time with Christa, realize that yes, their relationship was still as distant and faintly cordial as it had always been and that neither side would change. Her husband Renny would sniff when they met up at the station, and their son Vinny would probably be bored stiff of Uncle Myron by now. They'd see the Broadway play that Christa had dragged them all to see, and then they'd eat dinner somewhere awkwardly, where Myron would give Vinny his belated birthday gifts that he'd probably dislike, before dispersing.
Just once, Myron wished, he'd liked there to be a little something out of the ordinary in his life.
When the train at last pulled into the station, Christa, Renny, and Vinny were nowhere to be found. Figuring that it was just his luck that he'd arrived earliest and would have to wait, Myron phoned just in case-- and sure enough, they were stuck in traffic outside the city and probably would be another hour.
He could have taken a train and gone back. The thought wriggled around in his head for a little while, but ultimately the idea of taking Vinny's gifts away from him stopped Myron.
If he was anything, he was an absolute softie when it came to children. Even when he was working monitoring plants during the children's tours, he was more than happy to explain what he was doing to influence a particular group of fish's ecosystem. Or even to identify the fish.
Myron resolved himself to sit around the train station and peoplewatch, and eventually a poster caught his eye. It was meant to be motivational and probably advertising something, but the words fixated him: you are the change you want to see in the world, so what are you waiting for?
He blinked.
And then, he stood up and began to walk.
It was a hot day in New York City, as the last few had been, and even staying the underground station had started to get sweltering. Myron had decided something: he was going to try and make things better for himself. Yeah, maybe he was worried about his job-- he'd try harder and he'd convince his bosses that he was valuable. Yeah, maybe his relations with Christa's family weren't so great-- they still had a lot of time to improve and really, sometimes it just took one little step to set a great change in motion, right?
He was going to be the change.
With those thoughts merrily rambling around in his head, he began to meander through the streets. After all, he had an hour to himself in the world's largest city-- surely he could find something that was close by and right up his alley.
It was about fifteen minutes before he passed the arcade and then had to double back.
It looked like something that he would have loved as a kid. Normally, he probably wouldn't have gone in, but since he had the time and the new resolve to turn over a new leaf, he thought why not?
Gingerly perusing the machines, Myron started to be less sure of himself. Yeah, trying to play one of them had seemed like a good idea to spend his time-- in his day, he'd been quite good at Pong -- but now that all these options stood before him, well....it made him think that it really was a little unusual to see a forty-something year old man in a arcade like this after all.
So, refusing to give up on it but caving to pressure slightly, he chose one of the machines toward the back, away from the flood of people at the front doors, where he wouldn't be stared at as much. The game seemed kinda generic, or so he guessed. There were all the buttons and regular joysticks of most games, but there wasn't any designs on the casing of the machine to tell him what genre the game was in or anything.
Myron shrugged it off. Why not let it be a surprise?
With his tongue between his lips, he inserted the coins it would need to play and got ready.
Surprisingly, the game was about fish.
Or, well, about the deep ocean.
He controlled a small fish that had to make its way through the skeletons of larger fish or whales on the sea floor, eventually moving from one end of the level to the other, avoiding the dangerous spikes of bones, but also hiding under them to defeat enemy predators like sharks. The ocean was a murky blue-brown color, almost giving it a ghostly feeling, like his little fish was swimming through the fishy equivalent of lost pirate ships.
At first, it was pretty easy. The predators were far and few between, and he didn't have the move the joystick much. This was the kind of game that Myron liked-- it gave him a feeling of satisfaction at his own abilities without stressing him out.
The next levels were much more fast paced. At what would be the last one, he felt his heart beating fast in his chest as he dodged spines and lured sharks into them, all with only about a pixel to separate him from losing everything. When his fish swam happily into the shoal at the end of the level, his hands were still sweatily gripping the joysticks, waiting.
It wasn't until the words "Congratulations! You've Won" flashed on the screen in fish bones that Myron relaxed, allowed his hands to slip by his sides. God, he was no good at these situations.
"You know," he said aloud to himself at the arcade, "I think that's the first video game I've ever won."
Something clicked in the prize slot. The noise startled him at first-- Myron hadn't even realized that there was a prize slot-- but he recovered and gently stuck his hand in.
The prize he felt was circular, smooth, and almost damp-- but no, that's couldn't be, it had to be candy or something like that. Like a gumball, maybe. Except that this one was grey and murky blue, with a picture of a fish's bones on it. Maybe not all that appetizing, but still a nifty little souvenir.
Whistling and feeling proud of himself, Myron began walking back to the station. See? He puffed out his chest. He could change things. He could do things that made him anxious and win at them, no problem. He could make things better.
And surely Christa and her family would see that, too.
