COLUMN: Switch

What's the best way to achieve a stress break? I honestly want to know, because I think I'm doing it wrong.

Last week was crummy. There wasn't anything especially challenging about past 7 days. No particular ills befell me. It was just one of those weeks, y'know? I prefer to live a relatively unstructured life, free of burdens and plans. Sure, I work and eat and sleep and all that, but in my down time, I'm not one to make schedules. LAST week, though, it felt like my every hour was mapped out with mundane activities and chores that certainly weren't high on my to-do list. 

Ergo, I was grumbly.

By the time the weekend hit, I needed a break. Just one day of full-throttle, unbridled, no-responsibility ME TIME. I woke up on Saturday unwilling to meet the day head-on. Determined to stay in bed as long as possible, I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and thought maybe some wacky internet videos would put me in a better mood. 

For once, Youtube's "Recommended For You" suggestions hit the nail right on the head. Its top suggestion for me that morning was a video simply entitled, "Why You Need A Nintendo Switch."

Okay, realistically, no one over the age of fifteen needs a Nintendo Switch. There's not many occasions in my adult life where I've gone, "You know what I need right now? A hand-held video game console."

"But," said my mind, "You know what might be crazy fun right now? A hand-held video game console."

Maybe a Nintendo Switch was just what the doctor ordered. It really is a pretty great device. It looks stellar when connected to a TV, but then you can just unplug it and take it on the go and bust out some Super Mario Brothers anywhere you fancy. I realize this is fairly unnecessary in the lives of most 50-years-old. But I am NOT most 50-year-olds. Finally, I had my reason to get out of bed.

Two hours later, I walked back into my house with a shiny new Nintendo Switch in hand. What a great idea this was. If I ever again find myself stressed out by life, I can just take a five minute break, pull out the Switch, and for a few precious moments, my only care in the world shall be helping my buddy Mario rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.

Poor Mario. I thought I had it bad. Just getting to work in the morning is sometimes enough to send me over the edge. Imagine doing it while jumping over barrels, bouncing off mushrooms, and falling into a never-ending array of pitfalls and pipes. There might be days I wish I wasn't at work, but it sure beats a world where the only apparent source of income is bashing your head against boxes all day hoping one of them contains gold coins. 

So I plugged in, turned on, and prepared to let all my cares float away into a haze of nerdy abandon. I just need to move Mario a little to the left here annnnd -- oops, I died. Okay, I just press X to jump to this platform thingy annnd -- I died again. But then I jump onto this little mushroom here annnd -- the mushroom killed me. Grr.

As it turns out, whoever said video games are a stress relief is a moron, or at least someone who's never played video games before. Within five minutes, I was cursing into the open air. Ten minutes after that, I threw the game controller in disgust, causing one of my cats to jump about five feet into the air. By the end of the hour, those poor cats heard about every swear word in the book, and a couple new ones I made up on the spot.

This isn't stress-relieving. It's stress-INDUCING. I spent another half hour learning 27 new ways for poor Mario to die before I gave up in disgust.

Later that night, I had a couple friends over and we all decided to try our hand at Super Mario Brothers like some kind of geriatric tag-team. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one terrible at it.

"This game is awful," my friend said.

"It's the exact same game we played for hours straight in college," I said.

"It's gotten harder," my friend insisted.

"Dude," I replied. "I think we've gotten softer."

As of press time, I've yet to reunite Mario with his beloved princess. It's probably for the best. I get the feeling Princess Peach could probably do better than a vertically-challenged plumber with an accent so bad it borders on being a hate crime. I think I'll set the Switch down for a bit and go back to being stressed out. Now, if someone would kindly point me towards any boxes I could break open with my head, that'd be swell. I need to find some gold coins to pay off this thing.