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II. Paperboy

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

I scowl at the screen. Every mailbox missed. Vandalism
everywhere. The paperboy careening out of control in an 8-bit
collision. Throwing the controller down, I close out the arcade
simulation on my computer. Teenage impatience. I hated the
game anyways. Paperboy.

It was a simple game with a simple storyline and, therefore, a
simple objective. The player controls a paperboy on a bicycle
delivering newspapers on a suburban street. Similar to my
own, except we didn’t have mailboxes at the end of our
driveways, and I had never seen a paperboy in our
neighborhood the whole time I had lived there. Simple
storyline. As for the objective, get the newspapers in the
mailboxes. Easy. But by throwing them. The controls were
novel. Click to throw and move the joystick side-to-side to
avoid obstacles. Easy. To complete this task, though, it took
extraordinary precision and immense skill. For being such a
simple-minded game, it appeared to require too much
practice to be good at it.

Yet I am told that I was an expert at the game when I was only
a toddler.

In my infantile stages, according to legend, I could pick up the
controller and nail every newspaper in the right mailboxes as
if I had been playing it all my life. No problem. My grandma
still rants about how she couldn’t do it, but there came little
Stephy and like magic, she could. I always smile at the
absurdity. Her voice rising. True dismay. This was not an
exaggerated story.

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