if life is an arcade game, sometimes you play the mole.

do you know this game? i LOVE this game. it’s my favorite.

i truly excel at it. i don’t know why (perhaps some pent-up anger issues?) but i find it sublimely thrilling to whack the holy heck out of a plastic ghetto mole. it seems like an arcade game with substance and the potential for both psychological catharsis and a good upper arm workout.

anyways.

i was talking to my roommate tonight about something i did that required courage, and how it didn’t QUITE work out as i had anticipated, and she mentioned something about every time we stick our heads up, they get cut off.

or something like that. it made sense at the time.

that comment reminded me of this game.

and i thought i’d blog about it.

to say, i guess, that when she mentioned that idea, i thought immediately that i’d much rather be smacked a couple of times with life’s styrofoam mallet than not stick my head up at all. it’s the sticking your head up that gets you the good stuff. it’s the sticking your head up that gets you where you want to go. it’s the sticking your head up that makes you make all the difference in the world.

it’s the sticking my head up that has made the difference between the 2004 me and the 2008 me. i’m unwilling to go backwards.

so, regardless of the outcome (even when it’s genuinely surprising), i’ll keep sticking my head up. what do i really have to lose?

i mean, it’s not as if the mallet ever permanently gets those stupid plastic moles. just stuns them a bit, gets them hibernating for a minute, and then has to come back for more to literally keep them down. they are the arcade version of eternal optimism and unbelievable spunk.

so i’ll play the mole role if i must. i’ll dance with fate’s version of a big padded mallet and see what happens, because it usually turns out to make me into what i want to be…

…indestructibly plastic, animated by fake money, and a resident of an arcade?

yeah. there goes the metaphor, unwieldy beast that it is.

you know what i mean.